The questions for Theo Epstein the other day were rightly about why he's leaving the Cubs now and what he's going to do next. But in the middle of his explanations, he talked briefly about his worry about where the sport is as an entertainment product.
"It is the greatest game in the world," Epstein said, "but there are some threats to it because of the way the game is evolving, and I take some responsibility for that because the executives like me who have spent a lot of time using analytics and other measures to optimize individual and team performance have unwittingly had a negative impact on the aesthetic value of the game and the entertainment value of the game."
He is the most prominent front-office official to talk openly about this, but he's hardly alone. Among teams, there is enormous concern about how the micromanagement for advantageous matchups has created enormous valleys of inaction throughout most games -- the parades of relievers, the strikeouts, the walks. Privately, people in the industry are deeply concerned about trying to draw the next generations of baseball fans to a sport in which most of the time nothing happens beyond the changing ball-strike count.
It's unclear what Epstein is going to do next, but it would be a great idea for commissioner Rob Manfred and players' association leader Tony Clark to ask Epstein to lead the conversation about change, to start a committee devoted to making the game more entertaining.
Epstein, who has always connected well with players, could ask some current players to be part of the conversation, to talk about what is needed to create more action and help the pace of play. There could be discussion about limiting defensive shifts in order to promote offense but also about the efficacy of miked-up players, about fan interaction and the use of social media.
As one executive said during the summer, this generation of statistically driven front offices desperately needs leaders in the sport to rescue teams from themselves. Manfred and Clark have plenty on their plate already, with coronavirus complications and the last year of the current collective bargaining agreement looming. They need help -- the sport needs help -- in making it more attractive, and Epstein could spearhead that.
"Clearly, you know the strikeout rate's out of control," he told reporters, "and we need to find a way to get more action in the game, get the ball in play more often, allow players to show their athleticism some more and give fans more of what they want."
Adversity can unite under the best of circumstances, but it can also expose chasms, and as agents and front-office staff have said privately, three major fault lines have been exposed this year.
1. The tension between Major League Baseball and the players' association played out last spring, with the ugly negotiations leading up to the 60-game season, and folks on both sides of the aisle are extremely concerned that the troubled relationship will be an issue again unless the coronavirus situation changes dramatically, most likely through a vaccine. If confidence that next season can play out seamlessly starts to flag in the spring, then it's possible that the owners will again push for some sort of a reduction of salaries -- and the players' association, likely in the midst of a brutal winter for 200-plus veteran free agents, will push back, perhaps with even more vigor than it did last summer.
2. A chasm has developed between some front offices and their respective ownerships, with some influential staffers upset that the people they work for haven't done more to protect and help rank-and-file employees despite being in a position to help. The Dodgers were the latest team to fire staffers. There is anger among staffers that some owners are just using the COVID-19 crisis as cover for financial belt-tightening and that some owners are simply not interested in helping longtime employees who need help.
3. The frustration between some front offices and the commissioner's office has deepened. On one hand, club employees had enormous respect for the exhaustive efforts of particular individuals in central baseball as teams dealt with unprecedented pandemic protocols and concerns. On the other hand, a lot of club executives have been angry with what they consider to be a lack of leadership and communication, and they hope Manfred can work to improve that problem.
Cooperstown considerations
The Hall of Fame released its 2021 ballot the other day, and among the newly eligible candidates, there are no slam-dunk choices like a Derek Jeter or a Mariano Rivera, assuring that the conversation in January will again be about three of the primary holdovers -- Curt Schilling, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. Last year, Schilling's vote percentage spiked markedly again. He has jumped from 51.2% in 2018 to 60.9% in 2019 to 70% last winter, and the expectation is that next summer he will stand alongside those in the deferred Class of 2020, Jeter and Larry Walker (assuming that the pandemic won't cause a second postponement of the ceremony in Cooperstown, New York).
Bonds and Clemens have only two years of eligibility remaining to be elected by the writers; after that, they would be at the mercy of the special committees formed by the Hall of Fame.
If all voters evaluate the careers of Clemens and Bonds based solely on playing performance, the duo would be selected unanimously, or close to unanimously, now that the Rivera precedent is in place. Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards and 354 games, and he struck out 4,672 batters. Bonds had an adjusted OPS+ of 182, third best behind Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, and won seven MVP awards.
But a major bloc of voters -- about 40% -- have chosen to disqualify Bonds and Clemens, the two most prominent players named in the Mitchell report, baseball's investigation into the sportwide use of performance-enhancing drugs. Eighty-nine players were listed in the summary, but by now, there has been enough revealed about the era through reporting and players for the voters to understand that it is highly likely that thousands of players competing under baseball's umbrella used steroids, human growth hormone and amphetamines. The broad industry assumption is that steroid users have been inducted into the Hall.
At this stage, the writers who have aimed their retroactive morality against Bonds and Clemens have to know that they have essentially deputized themselves as steroid police in charge of fostering the mirage of a drug-free Baseball Hall of Fame. It's a curious role for journalists.
As far as Major League Baseball is concerned, Clemens and Bonds are members in good standing. Both men have been employed by teams since the Mitchell report was released late in 2006 and could be hired today. Many, many other players who served PED suspensions or have been tied to steroids continue to work in the game.
As far as the Hall of Fame is concerned, Bonds and Clemens are members in good standing. Unlike Pete Rose, whose name was never forwarded for induction consideration, Clemens and Bonds have been placed on the ballot annually over the past nine years.
And yet the large minority of Hall of Fame voters have seemingly targeted Bonds, Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire with their ballots, despite the apparent reality that what really separated those players from a lot of their peers was not their perceived PED use but the fact that they were among the best players. They've drawn PED scrutiny that others haven't because their accomplishments were greater.
The criterion that has been used to not vote for Bonds and Clemens is the so-called character clause -- and the irony this year is that the Baseball Writers' Association of America recently (and rightly) stripped the name of the person who is believed to have authored the clause from the name of the BBWAA MVP awards. In Kenesaw Mountain Landis' quarter-century as commissioner, Major League Baseball aggressively kept Blacks out of the game, and it wasn't until right after Landis died that Jackie Robinson became MLB's first African American player.
In the first seven decades of Hall of Fame voting, the character clause was essentially obsolete as a consideration for voters; rather, that conduct standard drawn up by Landis wasn't taken seriously, as evidenced by the wide range of personalities who won induction.
But as the steroid-era candidates began to appear, a lot of writers chose to weaponize Landis' words, creating a new precedent. It's still not too late for them to get out of the business of character assessment and focus on picking the best baseball players to be recognized at a baseball museum. It's not too late to recognize that the Hall of Fame is not a holy shrine.
• I stopped voting for the Hall of Fame years ago because of concern over how altered ballot rules seemed to be pointedly gerrymandered against steroid-era candidates like Bonds and Clemens, but among those on the ballot this year, here's how I'd rank a top 10:
1 and 2. Clemens and Bonds; Bonds and Clemens.
3. Curt Schilling. He and I worked together on Sunday Night Baseball and we didn't see eye-to-eye on politics, and some of his tweets have been offensive. But none of that has anything to do with whether his career was worthy of consideration. He should already be in the Hall.
4. Manny Ramirez. One of the best hitters of his generation, with a career marred by multiple drug suspensions. But MLB and the Hall of Fame decided those violations weren't enough to disqualify a player from election consideration.
5. Scott Rolen. Very underrated résumé, with 316 home runs and many years as one of the dominant defenders in the game -- he won seven Gold Gloves.
6. Todd Helton. Yes, there was an enormous difference in his performance in road games compared to what he did in the friendly confines of Coors Field. But nobody ever seems to bring up home-field advantages when it comes to pitchers -- future Hall of Famer Madison Bumgarner, for example, benefited from a decade working his home games in San Francisco -- so why should that be a disqualifier for hitters?
7. Andruw Jones. He was a difference-making defender behind three Hall of Fame pitchers, and he slugged 434 homers.
8. Sammy Sosa. Six hundred and nine homers in his career.
9. Gary Sheffield. If he had played at a time when exit velocity was tabulated, he would've resided in the Aaron Judge/Giancarlo Stanton neighborhood of metrics.
10. Jeff Kent. He was a forerunner of how teams fill second base these days, with an emphasis on offense over defense, and he mashed 377 homers.
• Stan Musial would have turned 100 years old Saturday, as Paul Hembekides notes, and Hembo sent along his six favorite Stan the Man notes (for Musial's uniform No. 6).
1. Musial collected 3,630 career hits, the fourth-highest total in MLB history (second highest at time of retirement) -- 1,815 came at home and 1,815 on the road.
2. Musial was born on Nov. 21, 1920, in Donora, Pennsylvania, a small mining town in the southwest corner of the state. Forty-nine years later -- to the day -- Ken Griffey Jr. was born there too. Thus, as baseball historian Bill James put it, Griffey could be described as "the second-best left-handed-hitting, left-handed-throwing outfielder ever born in Donora, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 21."
3. Musial debuted as a 20-year-old on Sept. 17, 1941, at the tail end of baseball's greatest summer. Ted Williams batted .406 that year, the last player to hit .400 in a full season. Musial batted .426 -- 20-for-47 -- in 12 games.
4. Musial's nickname -- Stan the Man -- was bequeathed to him by Brooklyn Dodgers fans in 1946, who chanted "O-O-h, here comes the man again" when he walked up to the plate. Musial produced 522 career hits against the Dodgers, most by any player all time.
5. Musial generated 1,377 extra-base hits (the MLB record at the time of his retirement) for his career against 696 strikeouts. That margin (681 more extra-base hits than strikeouts) is the largest of its kind among all players to debut in the live ball era (since 1920).
6. Musial became the first player in National League history to win three MVP awards (1943, 1946, 1948). But perhaps more impressive, he finished top 10 in MVP voting 14 times, a record that stands to this day (for any player in either league). A Sporting News poll named Stan Musial its Player of the Decade for the years spanning 1946 to '55 (post-World War II). One voter was Joe Cronin, who served as Red Sox manager (1935-47) and general manager (1948-58) during that entire time. Over that span (under Cronin's watch), Ted Williams led MLB in all three triple-slash categories (.344/.490/.642). But Cronin did not vote Williams his Player of the Decade.
He voted for Stan Musial.
News from around the major leagues
• Another example of how teams don't really care about earned run average and focus more on underlying metrics that hint at better performance to come: Michael Wacha is among the most popular starting pitchers in the free-agent market, despite posting a 6.52 ERA in eight appearances for the Mets. Wacha's average fastball velocity was up in 2020, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio was an outstanding 5.3. He surrendered a whopping nine home runs, but the way teams think these days, they'd prefer to find somebody with the weapons to get better. Wacha broke in with the Cardinals in 2013, but he is still just 29 years old and -- like Drew Smyly -- could parlay the broad interest into a decent short-term deal.
• A decade ago, teams scrambled to find suitable managerial candidates, finding the depth in the minor leagues less than ideal. But now, says one front-office official, there seems to be a lot more managerial talent available in the sport, even if few of them have actually managed. One such person is James Rowson, the bench coach and offensive coordinator for the Miami Marlins, who was among those interviewed by the Red Sox before Boston hired Alex Cora. There was strong sentiment at the end of the process that it's inevitable that Rowson will manage in the big leagues.
• Mike Clevinger and the Padres understood the right-hander was hurt before he made his final appearances of the year, the last in the playoffs. Now Clevinger will have Tommy John surgery. But as with some other pitchers in this situation, there was a belief that Clevinger could fight his way through his elbow injury to be effective -- and it just wasn't to be. Even though he hadn't pitched in 13 days, Clevinger opened Game 1 of the Padres' NL Division Series against the Dodgers and walked three in an inning before being removed, with the lack of command representing another clue about how seriously he was hurt.
Clevinger's two-year, $11 million deal with the Padres was really a good one for the pitcher, because no other team was going to have as much emotional investment in the right-hander as San Diego. General manager A.J. Preller traded a good package of players for Clevinger in August, aiming for him to be a rotation centerpiece for three seasons. If Clevinger hadn't worked out a two-year deal, the Padres would've likely decided not to tender him a contract for 2021, and then it might have been difficult for the pitcher to get $11 million from any other team, given the inherent uncertainty with Clevinger's recovery, the fact that this elbow reconstruction will be his second, the payroll reductions manifesting around baseball, and the unknowns about the next collective bargaining agreement, which is set to expire in a year and a week.
• There is a lot of speculation that the Yankees might trade Luke Voit, who was named on 27 of 30 AL MVP ballots cast this year, because of a possible surplus of position players. But it's worth remembering that while the Yankees have had depth the past few seasons, they've constantly been left in the position of relying on second and third layers of their depth because of injuries to Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Miguel Andujar, Aaron Hicks, etc. -- and players like Voit have become pivotal in their success. Additionally: The number of corner-slugger types available in free agency is enormous, from Marcell Ozuna to Nelson Cruz, which is likely to mitigate the trade value of someone like Voit. The most compelling reason for the Yankees to trade Voit would be if the front office truly believes that the slugger's performance last season is highly unlikely to be repeated. Voit had an adjusted OPS+ of 156, leading the AL with 22 homers.
• That Robinson Cano has now been suspended twice for performance-enhancing drugs raises questions that will probably never be answered with certainty about whether illicit substances were a constant in his career. Working under the terms of the $240 million contract he signed with the Mariners prior to the 2014 season, Cano had nothing to gain financially by taking the PEDs in 2018, or in 2020. Perhaps he felt he just couldn't compete the way he wanted without them.