Saturday, November 02, 2002

posted by djacobs to Baseball November 1 10:02 PM. Oh my bejeezies The Sox must look ahead to the winter of 2004 when Pedro Martinez, Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Lowe and Jason Varitek all reach free agency at once. It seems impossible that a team looking to manage its payroll more carefully could afford to retain all four, so don't rule out the club shopping around Garciaparra this offseason. Piazza for Nomar? [SportsFilter] Piazza? For Nomar? HA! While I do advocate trading Nomar (most likely after next season unless they get blown away by an offer this year), not for Piazza - not by a long shot. The Mets don't have the farm system or young talent to trade for Nomar - Mets fanboys like djacobs are dreaming if they think that can happen. More likely? The Dodgers - Nomar's home town, and their farm system is finally beginning to not look like crap. When Nomar gets traded, it'll be a Randy Johnson-type deal: Nomar is the kind of talent you give anything you can to get. The Sox may be in an even better position re: trading him after this year - our top prospect, Hanley Ramirez, is a 19 year old Dominican shortstop who can really hit already, though his fielding and patience are still pretty raw. Hopefully, he'll have a good year and the Sox won't feel the need to get a top-notch shortstop prospect in exchange for Nomar - which means they can rake in a couple pitchers and power hitters. I know that it's near blasphemy in Boston to think about trading Nomar - but of the Big Four (Pedro, Lowe, Nomar, Manny - Varitek's nice but he's nowhere near the financial significance of the others), he's the one I'd move, even if they all had the same salary. Pedro's the best pitcher in baseball - almost certainly the best pitcher since Koufax, maybe the best pitcher of the post-Jackie Robinson game. Sure, he's had a history of injuries and he's 30 - but he also pitched into September last year before tiring (and even that looks like a direct result of one game where he threw over 120 pitches) while throwing an absolutely stellar season. There's not a team in baseball with enough talent at cheap enough prices to trade for him. Lowe's a young pitcher with a proven track record of excellence - using Bill James' Win Shares method of calculating player value, he was the second most valuable pitcher in the American League in '99 and '00 (after Pedro) - as a reliever, and I think he may have led the league in Win Shares this year. Sure, he's not Pedro, but I can only name a couple pitchers I would rather have on the mound than him - Pedro, Randy. That's it. Then there's the advantage to having these two in your rotation (and the amazing Tim Wakefield as well - the most versatile pitcher in baseball, with a great knuckler, and in the last two years he's drastically improved the rest of his arsenal - you don't finish 4th in ERA just on the strength of the knuckleball): see the Diamondbacks. Then there's Manny...when discussing this topic, everyone ALWAYS says, "Well, Manny's untradable," and leave it at that. Gammons has, on multiple occasions, referred to his deal as one of, if not the, worst contracts in baseball. We're given the impression that he's Juwan Howard or Vin Baker - a horrible, horrible signing. Um, guys? Manny's the second best hitter in baseball. He won the AL batting crown this year. He can HIT - he may be the most naturally gifted hitter I've ever seen. Sure, he's being overpaid (with the new labor agreement and expected salary drops), but here's just a few guys with worse contracts - Mike Hampton, Mo Vaughn, Derek Jeter (remember, he's making $2 million a year less than Manny - while his OPS was .794 last year, to Manny's 1.097. And don't argue defense - sure, a good defensive shortstop hitting like that is worth quite a bit, but he's a lousy shortstop), even Mike Mussina (who was quite mediocre this year)... Based on where the market was going, Manny's contract is understandable. I'm overjoyed that he'll be hitting for the Sox for the next 6 years - once Barry retires, we'll have the most devestating offensive force in baseball. I wouldn't trade that for anything. Nomar, though...he was still a very, very good player this year, but his OPS dropped to .880, his walk rate dropped, his groundball/flyball ratio flipped from his career average, his pitches-per-plate appearence dropped (though that began to recover as the year ran down), his average swinging on the first pitch fell to .325 from his career average of over .400 - which still looks good, until you hear that the major league average is around .360. He's still a very good hitter, but his career path had been going up-up-up, til his surgery. Now...well, he might bounce back next year. I've heard plenty of arguments that the changes in his swing (and there are changes) are due to the surgery and once he heals a bit more, he'll be right back where he was in 2000, but with the power that the wrist injury deprived him of. I tend to doubt it - he's going to be 30 next July, and there's no way he'll be worth the kind of money he'll be asking for as a free agent. However, he's still ridiculously valuable. He's one of the top two shortstops over the last five years (Tejada had a nice year this year, but he's not at Nomar's level yet, let alone ARod), charismatic, etc...any of the major market temas in need of a shortstop (the Mets, the Dodgers, maybe even the Mariners) would love to have him. If I were the Sox, I'd go balls-out to sign Jim Thome this off-season - a lineup based around Nomar, Manny and Thome with a rotation based around Pedro and Lowe (in the playoffs, I'd use Wakefield from the pen) could very easily go all the way. After that? Trade Nomar for young pitching and outfielders. The Sox don't need to fill every position with All Stars - they just need quality players to fill the rest of the lineup, rotation, and bullpen. Nomar could bring them four or five of those players. Seems like the right move to me.

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What the hell? I just saw a commercial for a TV movie on the Martha Moxley (Kennedy cousin killed a 15 year old girl in Connecticut back in the '70s, case just got closed in the last year or two), and it seems to be built around Mark f'n Furman's role in the case (??? Mark Furman? What did he have to do with this?). It gets worse (or at least weirder) - Furman's played by Chris Meloni, most well known for his role as one of the lead detecives on Law and Order: SVU...though his best role is (IMHO) Chris Keller on Oz. Anyway, it's just weird - I'm hoping he's making a lot of money off slumming like this. =)

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Microsoft coverage My column talks about how the judge's decision, while seemingly "in the public interest" point by point, fails to reflect the public interest as a whole. Farhad pulled together a diverse and contradictory set of reactions to the decision. Andrew Leonard picked the wrong day to be on vacation (or the right one, depending how you look at it!). [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] Scott's column is definitely worth reading - a thorough raking over the coals for this ridiculous ruling.

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