Will Middlebrooks is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to explaining his unfulfilled potential in Boston. The 26-year-old third baseman is hesitant to blame injuries – no one wants to be seen as an excuse-maker — but there’s no denying his familiarity with the trainer’s table. Wrist, finger, leg, back – he’s been on the disabled list four times in three years, and on numerous occasions has played hurt.

Middlebrooks is a Padre now, having come to San Diego in exchange for Ryan Hanigan this past December. He’s also – at least for the moment – unencumbered by malady. I asked if injuries were the root cause of his uneven performances in a Red Sox uniform.

“No, of course not,” responded Middlebrooks. “That hasn’t been the only thing. There’s a big learning curve when you’re a young player. You’re learning pitching. There are guys adjusting to you and figuring out your weaknesses. It’s that cat-and-mouse game we always talk about.”

It’s hard for a cat to catch a mouse when he’s hobbled, and Middlebrooks has a plodding .695 OPS in 232 big-league games. He has the potential to do much more, particularly in the slugging department. Prior to his 2014 power outage – just two dingers — he had 32 home runs in 660 at bats. A mechanical adjustment may help him invigorate his long-ball stroke. Read the rest of this entry »

Cla Meredith’s MLB debut was inauspicious. Actually, it was an abomination. Called up to Boston less than a year after being drafted out of Virginia Commonwealth University, Meredith came out of the Fenway Park bullpen in the seventh inning of a tie game. The Seattle Mariners had one on and two out.

He walked Randy Winn. Then he walked Adrian Beltre. The third batter he faced, Richie Sexson, hit a fly ball to right field.

“When the ball left the bat, I took a few steps toward the dugout,” remembers Meredith, who threw the fateful pitch on May 8, 2005. “I thought I was out of the jam, but the ball just kept drifting and drifting, and pushing and pushing, and doink, it went right off the foul pole.”

Grand slam. The fact that it was a wind-blown fly ball that traveled little more than 320 feet was of scant consolation to the shell-shocked rookie.

“I wanted to dig a hole and climb in, man,” Meredith told me. “I felt overwhelmed. The weird part was, on any other day, with the weather different, and in any other ballpark, it’s a can of sh__ in Trot Nixon’s glove. If that ball is caught, it probably changes my career.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ellis Valentine knows what Josh Hamilton is going through. Valentine battled substance abuse during his playing days, in the 1970s and 1980s, and now works as a certified drug counselor. Hamilton – assuming the reports are true – recently suffered a relapse in his own struggles with addiction.

Valentine has been clean for nearly three decades, and he’s been helping others fight their demons for nearly as long. He’s offered to help the troubled Angels’ slugger, but Hamilton’s handlers have kept him at arm’s length.

“People come to me all the time and ask, ‘Why don’t you work with Josh Hamilton?’ Valentine told me. “I say, ‘I’d love to try — I have tried — but I can’t get close to him.’ I have a lot of compassion for Josh, but the people surrounding him don’t want me around.”

Valentine works out of Dallas and tried reaching out to Hamilton multiple times when the outfielder played for the Texas Rangers. Repeatedly rebuffed, Valentine actually wrote a letter to himself, in 2010, chronicling his failed attempts to lend assistance.

If Hamilton were to allow Valentine the opportunity, he’d receive some tough love. The erstwhile Expo – he represented Montreal in the 1977 All-Star game — was passionate when offering an opinion on what Hamilton has to do. The advice was shaped by personal experience as well as clinical training.

“Somewhere along the line, Josh Hamilton has to grow up,” said Valentine. “I was 31 years old before I filled out my first tax form. I was making hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I had attorneys, my agent – I had all these people to do things for me, so I was allowed to just go out and get high and be in la-la land. Read the rest of this entry »

In the opinion of some, baseball is broken. Not irreparably, but it’s become borderline boring and badly in need of an infusion of offense. Pace is a problem. Games last beyond the bedtimes of millions of young fans, many of whom have short attention spans.

There are myriad issues, and they can’t be ignored simply because certain indicators suggest the sport is thriving. What, if anything, to do about them? In the opinion of John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball, there are no obvious answers.

“It’s conflated,” Thorn told me a few days ago. “It’s tangled. People have a vague unease that things aren’t right — not the way the ought to be – and somebody ought to do something. The problem is, there’s no magic bullet.”

But based on historical precedent, an arsenal of options exists. For instance, following the 1968 season – aka “The Year of the Pitcher” – the mound was lowered by five inches. The measure had the desired effect: In 1969, OPS jumped from .639 to .689 and runs-per-game shot up from 6.84 to 8.14. (In 2014, OPS was .700 and runs-per-game 8.13).

It’s important to note that the game-altering move was necessitated by another game-altering move. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s become well-known that minor league players earn meager salaries. Little attention has been paid to the earnings of the instructors responsible for their development. They’re not getting rich either.

Salaries at the big league level are fairly generous. Some managers make seven figures. Hitting and pitching coaches are paid anywhere from $150,000 to $350,000, with a select few earning far more. Bench coaches earn between $150,000-$250,000. Third base coaches are around $130,000-$140,000. First base coaches are in the $100,000-$110,000 range. Bullpen coaches bring home roughly $90,000.

It’s a different story down on the farm.

Minor league coaches get paychecks year round – unlike minor league players — but that doesn’t mean the majority can afford to spend their winters on the golf course. One baseball lifer I talked to said he managed in the minors for over a decade and never made more than $42,000 a year. He worked camps and substitute taught in the off-season to help make ends meet. Others manage winter ball in Mexico or Venezuela to earn extra money.

Not everybody I spoke to would get specific with salaries, but a front office type told me his club pays minor league coaches and managers a minimum of $35,000. Another put that number at $30,000. Multiple sources estimated the high end to be in the $150,000-$175,00 range, with long-time managers and coordinators typically at the top of the pay scale.

Player development staff salaries vary by organization. One contact cited the Marlins as a team that pays poorly, and the Braves as one of the more generous. Qualifying that he doesn’t know the exact difference in dollars – he’s with another club – he said, “That’s why Miami has a lot of turnover and Atlanta doesn’t.” Read the rest of this entry »

Burke Badenhop signed with the Reds yesterday, and he’ll bring more than a sinker with him to Cincinnati. The 32-year-old (as of today) righty will arrive with a sabermetric suitcase stuffed with theories and thoughts.

Badenhop has an economics degree and a track record of pitching well in a variety of relief roles. Usage and value were on his mind the last time we spoke.

“I’ve been thinking about something you might term bullpen clustering,” said Badenhop. “With the randomness of a baseball season, there is going to be an ebb and a flow to the wins a team ends up with, and what those wins look like. How you use your bullpen is going to vary by how close the game is.

“Say you’re a reliever and pitch in 12 games in a month. In those 12, are you throwing five games out of seven in the beginning, and then not pitching for a week? A long winning streak is good, but it can also be taxing if all the games are close and you are using the same high leverage guys on a nightly basis. A blowout or a complete game can be huge.”

Badenhop made a career-high 70 appearances last year and threw 70-and-two-thirds innings. I asked how hard it would be to take on an even heavier workload. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a Rays fan, you want Mark Sappington to make the team this year. If you’re a member of the Tampa Bay media, you really want Mark Sappington to make the team. Trust me on this one.

A 24-year-old right-hander from Peculiar, Missouri (yep), Sappington is 6-foot-5, throws 100 mph, and supplies quips at a mile a minute. Think Justin Masterson, smiling, sans a sinker.

The Rays acquired the happy-go-lucky hurler from the Angels in November – in the middle of the Arizona Fall League season – for Cesar Ramos. Going strictly by the numbers, it was a curious deal. A fifth-round pick in 2012 out of Rockhurst University, Sappington was 4-11, 6.04 this year between high-A Inland Empire and Double-A Arkansas.

I asked Sappington why the Rays were interested.

“Shoot, you got me,” responded the big righty. “I did kind of find my groove after moving into the bullpen, where I was able to harness all of my energy into one inning. I get pretty amped up on the mound. I get in the zone. I get in the Z.”

His mid-season move to the pen resulted in more mid-90s velocity readings. There were a few 98s and 99s, and Sappington told me he hit 100 in the AFL. Command is his biggest issue. He said it’s a matter of “getting through the baseball,” and when his timing is down he can throw the ball where he wants to. When it’s not, “That’s when there’s a little craziness.”

Mike Foltynewicz told me this summer that his control improves when he dials down from 100 to 94-95. Mentioning that to Sappington elicited admiration. Read the rest of this entry »

Steve Cishek learned to throw a slider in 2009. Three years later, the side-winding Miami Marlins righty learned how to throw it more effectively against left-handed hitters. He has since emerged as one of the best closers in baseball.

Cishek – as Eno Sarris wrote in December – has a reverse platoon split, despite an arm angle that suggests otherwise. Eno’s article addressed the reasons why, but didn’t cover Cishek’s thought process and back story. In order to find out how the 28-year-old turned into into what he is today – a pitcher with a 13.25 K/9 and .209 BAA vs LHH in 2014 — I went directly to the source.

——

Steve Cishek on his evolution as a pitcher: “What’s changed since I got called up is I throw my slider to two different locations. That’s kind of my big thing. I can backdoor a slider, whereas before I was just one side of the plate. Prior to 2012, I was in to lefties and away to righties with my slider.

“For me, it’s a different feel throwing a slider from arm side to glove side. I knew what my slider did, I just couldn’t understand how to command it to that side of the plate. Once I started figuring it out, it became a matter of muscle memory. Now it’s just a spot thing. If I start it here, it will end up here. Read the rest of this entry »

Per the second edition of The Fielding Bible, “From 2003 through 2007, Everett was the best shortstop in the game. It wasn’t even close.”

Adam Everett, who played from 2001-2011, mostly with the Astros, was awarded no traditional Gold Gloves during his career. Omar Vizquel and Jimmy Rollins were two of the reasons. Everett’s pop-gun bat was another, but that’s a topic for another day.

He’s aware of his analytics-based accolades. In 2012, Everett was a special assistant in Cleveland, and he’s spent the past two seasons as the infield coordinator – and briefly the bench coach – in Houston. His reading and comprehension levels go well beyond “The Error of My Ways: A Dinosaur’s Guide to Defense.”

“The Fielding Bible kind of revolutionized things,” Everett told me earlier this week. “For a lot of teams, it became, ‘How much (measurable) value does this guy bring beyond an offensive standpoint?’ It put defense on the map a little more.”

Quantifying defensive value is one thing. Playing defense is another. Everett credits former Astros coach Doug Mansolino – “He’s the guy who got me over the hump” – for much of his development. He also acknowledged former managers Jimy Williams – “a tremendous infield teacher” – and Phil Garner. Each gave him free rein to position himself on the field. Read the rest of this entry »

Professional baseball has been a strange road for 27-year-old Mark Hamburger. In 2011, four years after the Minnesota Twins signed him as a non-drafted free agent, Hamburger pitched in five games for the Texas Rangers. Since that time he’s meandered through the minors with multiple organizations and played a season of indie ball with his hometown team – the St. Paul Saints. Twice he’s run afoul of organized baseball’s recreational-drug policy.

Hamburger is older and wiser than he once was, and every bit as unique as he’s always been. Currently in his second stint with his original organization – he went 4-4, 3.79 with Triple-A Rochester last year – the righty is anything but ordinary.

When I talked to him a few days ago, the 6′ 4” Hamburger had just returned home from a yoga class. A former girlfriend introduced him to the ascetic discipline seven years ago, and he’s been stretching his body – and mind – ever since.

“Yoga has made me more flexible, and more enduring to the weird throwing form that is pitching,” Hamburger told me. “It’s also helped me spiritually and mentally. Yoga doesn’t focus on the next move or the previous move, but on that moment. That’s what you have to do in baseball, especially as a pitcher.”

Breath control is an important facet of yoga, and one of Hamburger’s “Three B’s of pitching.” Balance and break point are the others, but breathing is what helps him calm down and stay loose.

“I let out my air before every pitch,” said Hamburger. “That’s because I want to have the exact same delivery every time. When you have a little bit of air in your lungs, or a lot of air in your lungs, it becomes a different pitch. If you have no air in your lungs – you’re going off that last pocket – it’s the same every time.”

As for staying loose, the engaging hurler stresses that it helps a pitcher not get hurt. In his words, “You can’t break Gumby” and “When you’re whippy and snappy there is less tension in your arm.” Read the rest of this entry »