As I was saying ...

This blog interruption was brought to you by The Kansas City Star baseball section which will be coming out this Sunday. Every year, I write several long stories for our baseball section, and this always takes me out for several days. It's usually worth it, though, because the Star's special sections are usually quite amazing -- I believe we've won the big Associated Press Sports Editors award for our special sections each of the last nine years.

(OK, like you care. But next year, if you are in an APSE office pool, pick the Star special section).

Anyway, this year's section focuses on pitching aces, and I team up with Bill James on a couple of fun things, including his latest list of Top 25 starting pitchers ever (he uses a new system that I don't understand, so don't ask) and our combined look at 20 elements to create the perfect pitcher. I would love to unveil all that for you now, but that would ruin the surprise.

Instead, while decompressing, I'll provide a few links. Hey, I've seen other people take this lazy way out before ... I'll be back writing tomorrow.

-- Royals fans, you will want to click on the HF Royals Show.

-- Barry Bonds 756*#!f

-- A Buy The Soul of Baseball link ... how did that get in there?

-- I didn't know this before, but the director's cut of "The Natural" is coming out on Monday. We might add a few home runs to his season. Here is something to get the blood pumping.

-- Vac on Doc. You can't do much better than that.

-- Buster on Ryan Howard. One of my favorite stories in the book is when Kenny Lofton walks over to Buck O'Neil and says, "Buck, I want you to meet the left-handed Josh Gibson." And then he ran off and retrieved a shy Ryan Howard.
"Pleased to meet you sir," Howard said as he stares at the ground.
"You got some power, young man?" Buck asked.
"A little bit sir," Howard said, and he kept staring at the ground. Buck barked, "Don't be ashamed of your power, son," and then he offered a Haiku. He said:

If you got power
Don't hide it for nobody
Swing the bat hard, son

I'm wondering now, have I told that story on this blog already? Man, you do enough radio interviews and you wonder if you will ever again say anything original.

-- Speaking of The Natural, how about this Josh Hamilton story? They better watch the lights at the Great American Ballpark. I couldn't find any good Hamilton stories (Editor's note written 14 hours later: I realize now this makes it sound like there were no good Hamilton stories out there -- that's not at all what I meant. It was late at night, and I coudn't find any good ones. I have since read four excellent Hamilton stories). I did see this Meet the Reds page that amused me. Yowzah, could that photo of Jeff Conine be any bigger? And I love the fact it has a button where you can "Zoom." Does that take you inside his nose?

I Own You! Plus Al Fitzmorris

There will be no rhyme/reason to today's entry (like there was rhyme or reason to the Crash Davis scouting report). Today was just a day to wait around in a San Jose hotel room for Kansas and UCLA to play basketball. So I killed the time by messing around with Baseball Reference PI. For those of you who don't know about Baseball Reference PI, I would strongly recommend that you avoid it at all costs because it will drain away every free hour of your life. It is a search engine that essentially allows you to answer any baseball question you can imagine. I'm not kidding. Let's say that instead of doing something constructive like buying my book The Soul of Baseball (now featured on MLB.com!), you were wondering: "Hmm, I wonder when was the last time someone hit three triples in a game."

Rafael Furcal did it on April 21, 2002. He hit the first two off of Florida's Kevin Olsen, and he hit the last off Vic Darensbourg. He scored all three times -- and was driven in all three times by Andruw Jones. Those were the only two triples Kevin Olsen gave up all year. And so on.

One of the amazing features on Baseball Reference PI: You can break down stats to see how hitters and pitchers did against each other. This is great fun for me because I never get tired of seeing the George Brett vs. Ed Figueroa numbers. I am certain that no human ever hit another human being better than Brett hit Figueroa. Sugar Ray Robinson didn't hit Jake LaMotta this good. Sonny Corleone didn't hit Carlo this good. We'll stop now.

Brett faced Figueroa 45 times, and hit .610 against him.

It was love at first sight. Brett first faced Fig on May 1, 1975 -- it was the seventh inning, and the Royals were losing by two runs with two men on. Brett cracked a single to left, a run scored, and the Royals would go on to win the game. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Brett's next time against Fig he singled to center, next time he doubled to center, next time he singled to right.

Brett walked. He singled. He walked again. He singled again. On September 5, he faced Figueroa four times and he singled, doubled, singled and singled. He doubled to center on September 13, and then finally (finally) grounded out to second. That means the first 13 times George Brett faced Ed Figueroa, he went 11 for 11 with two walks. There has never been anything quite like it.

(In all, Brett went 12 for 14 against Figueroa in 1975 -- an .857 batting average. The rest of the league hit .223 against Figueroa).

And the great thing is that after four uneventful years, their paths would cross again in 1980 -- the year Brett almost hit .400. That season, Brett went 7 for 9 against Figueroa. Their beautiful duel ended on August 29 when Brett smashed a home run against Figueroa, grounded back to the pitcher, and then doubled to left. The last double raised his batting average to .407, the highest it would be all year.

I once asked Brett what it felt like for him to face Figueroa. He said: "You know, it's kind of hard to explain. He was a good pitcher (Figueroa finished his career 80-67, 3.54 ERA, was fourth in the Cy Young balloting in 1976). But for me, it was better than batting practice."

OK, so while looking up Brett, I found a few other unconnected but semi-interesting pitcher-batter statistics. At least I think they're interesting.

-- Mike Bielecki owned Barry Bonds. Bonds went 2 for 35 against Bielecki. He managed his one homer when Bielecki was a 36-year-old reliever in Atlanta.

-- Julian Javier hit .125 against Nolan Ryan in his career -- but he never struck out in 18 plate appearances.

-- Roberto Clemente famously owned Warren Spahn -- hit hit .471 against Spahn in 110 plate appearances. But the better Clemente statistic for me is that he faced Johnny Podres 111 times and walked once.

-- Rod Carew faced Doyle Alexander 53 times and never struck out. Hit hit .435 against Alexander. On the other hand, Carew hit .118 against Ron Guidry in 40 plate appearances.

-- John Mayberry tells a great story about Frank Tanana. They both grew up in Detroit, but I suspect that Big John may have grown up in a slightly different part of Detroit. In August 1974, Big John had 19 home runs (he was among the league leaders) when he faced Tanana in a game. Tanana came inside and hit Mayberry on the wrist. Big John missed three weeks, and was not quite right the rest of the season. He was not happy.

So early the next year (the date, sadly, is lost to history) the Royals were playing the Angels again, and Big John saw Tanana jogging in the outfield before the game. He ran after Tanana, grabbed him, shoved him against the fence and shouted, "Do you know how much money you cost me? Don't you EVER come inside on me again, you hear me? If you hit me again, I will kill you, do you understand? I will KILL you."

"After that," Big John said, "my homeboy Frank served it up on a plate for me. Nice and easy and over the middle of the plate, just how I like it."

Well, I looked it up. The whole thing is true. In 1973 and 1974, Mayberry faced Tanana 16 times, struck out six and hit .250. In 1975, he hit .462 against Tanana with zero strikeouts in 13-at bats. In fact from 1975 on, Mayberry hit .367 against Tanana and struck out just once in 30 at-bats (the strikeout came five years after the "I will kill you" incident -- and it was a very different Frank Tanana too).

-- I looked up a bunch of other stats -- Willie Mays owned Jay Hook, Hank Aaron owned Don Gullett, Jerry Kindall struck out in 18 of his 29 plate appearances against Sandy Koufax, Duane Kuiper hit .410 against Dennis Eckersley -- but I want to take one moment to write a little bit about my friend Al Fitzmorris. Fitzy is a wonderful guy and multi-talented -- he still sings and writes music like he did during his playing days -- but I want to focus on his pitching for a minute because I think it's possible that no pitcher in the last 50 years did more with less.

Fitz began his baseball career as an outfielder -- he said he was an outstanding hitter when the count was 3-1. He just couldn't get the count to 3-1 very often (Fitz did hit a respectable .242 in the big leagues). So he became a pitcher, and in the words of teammate John Mayberry, "Fitzy had absolutely nothing. He threw the kind of junk you leave on your front lawn and hope that someone steals."

The numbers bear this out. He struck out 3.23 batters every nine innings. That's astonishing. You look over the last 50 years at pitchers who threw 1,000 or more innings, and only two pitchers (Lary Sorensen and Lew Burdette) struck out fewer per nine innings. But Sorensen, Burdette and most of the others with low strikeout totals tended to have pinpoint control. Fitzy didn't have that either. He walked 3.05 batters per nine -- which ain't too great.

So we're talking about a guy who had absolutely nothing -- no stuff, no control -- and yet he went 77-59 in the big leagues. From 1973-1975, he walked more batters than he struck out. But Fitz went 37-21 with a 3.16 ERA and eight shutouts. I think, considering what Fitzy had, that stretch pound-for-pound is as good as Bob Gibson's 1968 season. Heck, anyone can get people out with a raised mound and a 98-mph fastball.

I asked Fitzy how he did it before a Royals game once, and he pointed out at batting practice. He said: "Watch these guys during batting practice. You'll see something: They don't get a hit every time up. They've got a pitcher throwing the ball from 50 feet away, right where they want it, and they still don't get a hit every time.

"The problem with pitchers today is they give too much credit to the hitter. They don't realize that it's hard to hit a baseball. I understood that because I was an outfielder who couldn't hit. Everybody's afraid to just pitch the ball. I wasn't afraid. I didn't have anything. But I wasn't afraid."

Incidentally, to keep with the theme, Reggie Jackson owned Fitz -- Reggie hit .441 against him in 40 plate appearances. Fitzy, undoubtedly, cares more about his success against Frank Robinson. He despised Frank Robinson, his manager in Cleveland. And in 24 plate appearances, Robby hit just .158 against Fitzmorris, and even more amazingly struck out six times.

Movie Scouting Report 2

Crash Davis, Durham Bulls.

Strengths: Switch hitter with power, especially from the left side. ... Generates good bat speed ... Has hit 227 home runs in the minor leagues. ... Outstanding mistake hitter. Feasts on hanging breaking balls and fastballs out and over the plate ... ... Aggressive hitter ... Hard worker who constantly tinkers with his swing ... Outstanding feel for the game. Will probably go into coaching when his career is over ... Works well with young pitchers ... Above average receiving skills. Blocks the plate. ... Calls a solid game.

Weaknesses: Cannot catch up to a good fastball, especially from right side ... Swings and misses a lot. Has never hit for a good average ... Below average arm ... Will go into prolonged slumps and then he starts to think too much. ... Has become a guess hitter in his later years. ... Won't take a walk. ... Well below average runner ... Gets down on himself.

Overall: Davis has bounced all over the place in his 12-year career ... Shows his age but he can hit the occasional home run, and he works well with young pitchers ... Still wants to play every day, and he's in good shape for a 35-year-old catcher. ... Can no longer hit upper level fastballs or good breaking pitches. ... Looks just like the guy from "The Untouchables." Eerie ... This will probably be his last year as a player. Could manage in the big leagues someday.

Movie question: Seriously, how many switch-hittting catchers with power and a sense of the game get stuck in the minor leagues for 12 years? This is just unrealistic. According to the movie, he only got 21 days in the big leagues. Heck, A.J. Hinch got almost 1,000 at-bats in the big leagues. So did Bobby Estalella.

I tried to find the Major League player who was the closest fit to Crash Davis. He had to be a switch-hitting catcher, of course, some power, a very low batting average and a reputation for loving the game. My first inclination was Buck Rodgers, who came up with some fanfare (he finished second in the 1962 Rookie of the Year race to Tom Tresh) and then hit .224 the rest of his career. He, of course, became a nondescript manager for three different Major League clubs. The only thing is, Buck Rodgers never seemed to me like the kind of guy who read Thomas Pynchon.

Matt Walbeck is a very promising Crash Davis prospect. Switch-hitting catcher, low average, from California (Crash had that California sound, didn't he?) always had a reputation as a guy who was a student of the game -- he has since released a series of instructional videos. He will be manager of the Erie SeaWolves, and he's been named manager of the year in the Midwest League twice. Matt's big drawback is that he didn't go to college. I always envisioned Crash as a guy who played in college.

So I'm going to settle on a third candidate -- and a personal hero of mine when I was young -- Chris Bando. I believe Chris was the Indians top prospect every year from, like 1953 to 1985 -- I could have the dates wrong there. Man, I loved Chris Bando. He was a switch-hitting catcher from Cleveland, he had some power, had a reputation as tough-as-nails player, was brother of Sal Bando, was a college superstar, and he killed the ball in Chattanooga one year. Trouble is, he just couldn't hit in the big leagues. He hit .213 his first year in limited at-bats, .212 his second, and never could quite make the jump to every day catcher (though to be fair, the Indians had Ron Hassey, Jerry Willard and Andy Allanson in those years).

My understanding is that Chris will be managing in Aiken this year -- and that's good. I feel like that's exactly what Crash would be doing too. ... Also his son Ben is now a catcher for Arizona State, where Chris won the College World Series. The only thing I don't get is that it says in the profile that Ben's last college was "The Master's." What is that? Do they allow women there?

The NL Central with Unnamed Scout

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Surprise! Groundless Hope and Bad Seasons

I find it both goofy and oddly touching that the Kansas City Royals train in a city called “Surprise.” It’s a bit like Bill Clinton being from a place called Hope. Every year, I come here, get stuck in the quagmire that is suburban Phoenix traffic, eat at various chain restaurants with names like Carrabas, and every year I feel that pointless, self-destructive but undeniable feeling that the Royals really COULD surprise, you know, if twenty or two hundred things happened to go right.

This is a baseball feeling that goes way back. The Cleveland Indians of my childhood were almost equally hopeless, and yet come March I would always put together a rather lengthy list of “Things that have to go right for the Indians to win the World Series.” The list usually involved Rick Waits putting things together and Charlie Spikes finding his power stroke. Now, with the Royals, the list involves Gil Meche putting things together and Emil Brown finding his power stroke.

It’s amazing how little my life has advanced in 30 years.

This is even truer than I first realized. The Royals are managed by Buddy Bell, an old hero and a staple of my childhood Indians teams. Fred Kendall is a coach – he was on the ’77 Indians, one of my favorites. And Monday, I saw grand old Dave Garcia driving a golf cart around the Surprise complex. Garcia was the manager of the Indians for much of my childhood – he’s now 87 years old but his memory is still sharp, and he’s the greatest guy. Point is, I’m never going to escape those old Indians teams.

ANYWAY, a partial list of things that have to go right for the Royals: Gil Meche develops into a high-end pitcher, Zack Greinke finds himself, Alex Gordon steps into immediate stardom, Mark Teahen repeats 2006* but for a full season (they’re talking about him in center field now – and he looks surprisingly good out there), Octavio Dotel recaptures his 2002-2003 form (he looks fabulous now – hitting 97 on the radar gun), Ryan Shealy bangs 25 homers, Esteban German repeats 2006* but for a full season, David DeJesus stays healthy, Mike Sweeney stays healthy, one of the Luke Hudson, Odalis Perez, Brian Bannister and Jorge de la Rosa quartet becomes an above average Major League, and so on. Some of these things, I expect, might actually happen. Some obviously will not.

There’s one hope that is too ridiculous to dream even in Surprise on a warm day in March -- the hope that Angel Berroa will reemerge. I was watching Berroa play another miserable game on Monday – he’s got a .270 on-base percentage with a .314 slugging percentage this spring which means he’s picked it right up from 2006, when he managed to finish dead last in the league in both OBP and SLG. He also showed no speed and played flat-footed defense.

Speaking of flat-footed defense, there’s a great photo on the Royals MLB.com page now. It’s a story about Alex Gonzalez, and it is headlined, “Gonzalez’s passion to play has been reignited.” Beneath is a photograph of Gonzalez reaching for a ball to his left and very clearly not getting there. This is absolutely accurate. Gonzalez (this is the long-time Blue Jays shortstop) does play hard, but these days his range is roughly the circumference of Ben Affleck.

ANYWAY, watching Berroa made me remember some of the amazingly bad individual seasons I’ve had the honor of watching as a columnist in Kansas City. Berroa. Lima. Neifi. Juan Gone. Bottalico. I was thinking: Sheesh, I’ll bet five of the worst 10 seasons in the Major Leagues since I arrived in 1996 were by Royals.

So, I decided to rank the 10 worst seasons in the Major Leagues since 1996:

10. Mike Caruso, Chicago White Sox, 1999. He was very, very difficult to strike out – he led the American League in that “toughest guy to strike out” in both of his full seasons in the big leagues. The trouble was that nobody really wanted to strike him out. He had a .280 on-base percentage and .297 slugging percentage in 1999, and for a speed guy he was caught stealing more often than he was successful. Three years later, he was a Kansas City Royal.

9. Casey Fossum, Arizona, 2004. He was the key player in the deal that sent Curt Schilling to Boston. I remember a friend telling me that deal would look good for Arizona someday. Schilling led Boston to its first World Championship since Emma Susan Daugherty Bannister became the first female sheriff in the United States (I love Wikipedia). Fossum went 4-15 with a 6.65 ERA.

8. Brian Anderson, Kansas City, 2004. His overall numbers (6-12, 5.64 ERA) do not place him in the Top 10. But for one month he was awe-inspiringly awful. From April 25 to May 27 that year, he went 0-7 with an 8.27 ERA (he also gave up nine unearned runs) and the league hit .385 against him. I’ve never felt worse for a player, especially because BA is an off-the-charts good guy. I’m sure he was pitching hurt, but he never made excuses and at one point he said, “They could call up a hard-throwing guy from high school, and that guy couldn’t pitch as badly as I’m pitching. It’s impossible to pitch as badly as I'm pitching.”

7. Shawn Chacon, Colorado, 2004. Yes, he pitched a lot in thin air, but 1-9 with a 7.11 ERA and 52 walks in 63 innings still counts.

6. Scott Brosius, Oakland 1997. What a weird year. He was terrific in 1996 with Oakland – hit .300 with power. He was an All-Star with the Yankees in 1998 and was the World Series MVP. But in ’97, Brosius hit .203 with a .317 slugging percentage. What is it Joe Garagiola always says? It’s a gelastic game? A riotous game? A diverting game? What’s that word?

5. Jim Abbott, California, 1996. He went 2-18 with a 7.48 ERA. It brings me no joy to put an inspirational guy like Abbott on the list. But he went 2-18 with a 7.48 ERA.

4. Ramon Santiago, Detroit, 2003. That 2003 Tigers team was the worst I ever saw, but it was truly a team effort – there were not too many comical seasons. Mike Maroth went 9-21, but you always got the sense that he was a good pitcher in a bad situation. Franklyn German led the team with five saves, and he had a sparking 6.04 ERA, but that won’t rank him with the worst relievers of the last decade. So, the star has to be Santiago, who did not do anything particularly well other than bunt people over. He managed a .284 slugging percentage in more than 500 plate appearances, which was hard to do in 2003

3. Eric Milton, Cincinnati, 2005. Record, 8-15. ERA: 6.47. Contract: 3 years, $25.5 million.

2. Neifi Perez, Kansas City, 2002. I’ve already gone over Perez’s magical season in another blog entry – he had a 40 OPS+ that year, stole eight out of 17 bases, played horrendous defense and offered that team-first attitude that inspired him to once refuse to go into a game. One of the most amazing parts of that season is that despite all that Neifi got 585 plate appearances – the Royals either led him off or hit him second 54 games.

1. Jose Lima, Kansas City, 2005. I have suggested to Bill James that this is the worst pitching season in baseball history. Lima went 5-16 with a 6.99 ERA. Bill suggested back that you can’t overlook Pat Caraway in 1931 (10-24, 6.22 ERA, and a remarkable 101 walks compared to 55 strikeouts) or Dan Griner in 1913 (10-22, 5.08 ERA which was hard to do in the deadball era). You also don’t want to discount Abbott’s 1996 season. I still think Lima was worse. Maybe I feel that way because the Royals paid him $250,000 in incentives for that performance.

So ... I’m surprised Berroa did not make the list. The Royals only have three of my worst 10 seasons – and Brian Anderson really does not belong here. Several other pitchers – LaTroy Hawkins in 1999, Jeff Fassero that same year, Hideo Nomo in 2004, Lima from 2000, on and on – were worse than Anderson. Anyway, it’s a new year. The Royals could surprise. That’s the real point here.