Baseball simply isn’t fun in Miami and Houston this season. Not that Jeffrey Loria, the Marlins’ owner, cares about the fans’ fun; he has often demonstrated his disdain for the fans the way he operates the team. But Jim Crane, the Astros’ principal owner, does seem to care, and if the Astros are to generate some fun for their fans, they need a co-participant.
Hence a proposal. These two teams are destined to lose 100 games each. Before you get the idea that it is unusual for two teams to lose 100 games in the same season, know that the Astros (107) and the Chicago Cubs (101) did it last year, in the same division, no less.
If the Astros lose 100 this season, it will mark their third successive season in accomplishing that feat. The Astros would also become the first team to say farewell to one league and hello to another with 100 losses. Teams, of course, don’t change leagues too often. The Astros, however, would do it with a flourish.
But they don’t have to lose 100 to play my game. In fact, they would have a better chance of winning if they didn’t lose 100.
All right, the idea is to create some incentive for the Astros and the Marlins and interest and excitement for their fans. That certainly won’t happen from their chances to gain a playoff spot. They have probably been eliminated from post-season competition already.
They can, however, avoid having the worst record in the majors. Through the first two months of the season, the Marlins had the worst record, 14-41, putting them 4 games behind the Astros’ 18-37 record. If they played the entire season with their 55-game winning percentages, the Marlins would finish with a 41-121 record, the Astros 53-109.
If the teams’ two-month or 55-game records were matched against each other on a game-by-game basis rather than on a daily basis, the Astros have had the better record for 32 of the 55 games, the Marlins 8 games and they were tied after 15 of the games.
My idea is to reward the winner of the battle between the teams with the worst records and the lowest payrolls. I wasn’t going to include payrolls, but I realized that the Marlins and the Astros are where they are because they have the lowest-paid players in the major leagues.
At season’s start, when everyone was beginning with the same record, Houston had a $24.3 million payroll, Miami $39.6 million. Combined, their payroll was lower than every other team’s pay list except Tampa Bay’s, and the Rays were only $7 million lower.
In other words, how were the Marlins and the Astros supposed to compete?
So Houston and Miami are playing in their own league while everyone else is playing in the major leagues. Incidentally, at the end of May only nine teams, including three in their own division, had better winning percentages than the $57 million Rays, who are the showcase of a team that does it right. The Rays do it so right that they were only a game behind the Yankees, whose payroll is four times greater.
The Rays are so good that they have played themselves well out of the competition between the Marlins and the Astros.
So what are the Marlins and the Astros to play for? When teams lose so frequently, the players tend to lose interest and go through the motions. But a worthwhile reward could spur a team to play as if a post-season spot were at stake.
Baseball could not allow a 100-loss team in to its post-season party. That wouldn’t be right or fair to the legitimate contenders. But create a reward that would affect only the loser.
Let the winner get the loser’s first round pick in next year’s draft, meaning the winner would get the top two picks and the loser would get none in the first round, having to wait until the first selection in the second round.
It could be argued that such a plan would only weaken the losing team further, but it would increase the incentive to avoid being the loser of the two-team race.
If you don’t like that idea for a reward, I have another one. Since the Marlins and the Astros are in different leagues, let the outcome of their race determine homefield advantage in the World Series, replacing the All-Star game as the determining factor.
That plan would put the determining factor in the hands of the two worst teams in the majors, but it would be more legitimate than having a meaningless exhibition game decide homefield advantage.
I spoke to Commissioner Bud Selig about the Marlins and the Astros, though not my idea about a competition to replace the All-Star game. I knew his answer to that without asking. But I did ask him if there was anything to be done about the two teams.
“That’s like asking in the ‘30s and ‘40s,” he said, “if there’s anything to be done about the Browns, the Athletics and the Senators.”
He had a point.
Jeff Luhnow, in his second season as the Astros’ general manager, thinks there’s something to be done about his team, and he’s doing it, trying to develop good young players into a competitive team
“I think we have waves of players,” he said on the telephone Friday when asked how he planned to improve the Astros. “We have one wave here now and we feel they’re getting good experience at this level. We feel they’re part of our future.”
The brightest spots of the in-house wave are second baseman Jose Altuve, third baseman Matt Dominguez and catcher Jason Castro.
“Three waves are coming behind them,” Luhnow said. “When waves one and two are ready, well look for pieces to fit with them. That is why we were modestly active in the free-agent market. We feel there will be a time in the future when we can benefit from rising players and put in pieces with them.”
Among the players Luhnow referred to are first baseman Jonathan Singleton, outfielder Domingo Santana and pitcher Jarred Cosart, whom the Astros got in the August 2011 Hunter Pence trade; outfielder George Springer, shortstops Jonathan Villar and Carlos Correa, infielder Delino DeShields Jr. and pitchers Asher Wojciechowski, Mike Foltynewicz and Lance McCullers.
The Astros have no timetable for any developments, Luhnow said, “but we feel a sense of urgency to make it happen as soon as possible. We were in the World Series in 2005 and we’ve been in decline since. It’s coming. I can’t put a time frame on it.”
Luhnow said the Astros have been well aware of possibly negative fan reaction to their constant losing but have taken steps to guard against it.
“We’ve communicated with fans what we’re doing,” he said. “We were able to retain 90 per cent of last year’s season tickets. The core base understands what we’re doing. They see the development of the young players. There aren’t as many wins as they’d like, but they see the increase in talent.”
Crane, the owner, and Luhnow have met with season-ticket holders. “Once they hear our plan and understand it,” the general manager said, “they feel they’re part of it.”
The Astros’ attendance is nevertheless down from last year, falling from a season average of 19,849 to a current 18,243. The Marlins understandably are doing even worse, plunging from a 2012 average of 27,401 to 17,844. Trading most of your best players can have that effect.
The Marlins’ best player, Giancarlo Stanton, has been on the disabled list most of the season with a strained hamstring, playing only 20 games, none in May. His absence leaves Miami with two veteran starters, third baseman Placido Polanco and left fielder Juan Pierre.
Four of the other six regulars are rookies – second baseman Derek Dietrich, shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria, right fielder Marcell Ozuna and catcher Rob Brantly.
The Marlins are best known for demolishing their team. They did it once under the first owner. H. Wayne Huizenga, and twice under Loria, who unlike Houston’s Crane, wouldn’t do well meeting with Marlins fans. If they even showed up for a meeting with Loria, they wouldn’t believe a word he said. Based on my experience with him, I wouldn’t.
My attempts to learn something about the Marlins’ plans were futile. General manager Larry Beinfest told a team public relations man to tell me he wasn’t available to talk. Loria never answers his phone, in my experience, but he did answer last Friday. Hearing his voice shocked me.
However, when I told him who was calling, he growled, “I don’t have anything I want to discuss.” And he hung up.
BEFORE KAMINSKY, THERE WAS SCHWIMER
Last week I wrote about a New Jersey high school pitcher who was expected to be chosen early, perhaps late in the first round, in the annual draft Thursday. But Rob Kaminsky’s story wasn’t his likely place in the draft; it was his unusual, most likely his unique, background.
He attended a Jewish day school through eighth grade, then went to a Catholic high school. I wrote that Kaminsky, who is Jewish, might be the first player among the thousands of players who have been chosen in the 49-year history of the draft to have that background.
No sooner was the column posted on the Web site than I received an e-mail from a reader in the Washington, D.C., area telling me “For an almost comparable, Google Michael Schwimer of the Blue Jays….”
Fearing I had overstated Kaminsky’s case, I did just that. But what I found made it unclear if the Kaminsky and Schwimer experiences were the same. I tracked down Schwimer at the Toronto minor league complex in Dunedin, Fla., where he had gone for treatment of a sore shoulder.
It turned out that Schwimer had not usurped Kaminsky’s unique status.
“I went to public school through sixth grade,” Schwimer, now 27, said. “I went to Hebrew school, but it wasn’t an all-day school. That was only once or twice a week after school. Then from seventh through graduation I went to an Episcopal high school.”
Kaminsky opted to attend St. Joseph Regional High School in Montvale, N.J., his father said, because it had a strong baseball program and taught the same values as the Solomon Schechter Jewish Day School in New Milford, N.J.
Dan Schwimer explained why his son chose St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes High School in Alexandria, Va.
“It was for educational purposes, not for sports purposes,” he said in a telephone interview. “It had a great reputation. We had impressed on him the importance of education. He was focusing poorly in public school. We felt it would be a better challenge. It was not based on the sports program.”
Playing baseball and basketball in high school, Schwimer, now 6-feet-8, excelled at both. He someday wanted to play professional baseball, but he shunned the interest major league organizations showed in him. College came first.
“Education is very, very important to me, more important than athletics,” Michael Schwimer said. “I had offers, but I was going to finish college.”
Many players, of course, choose baseball over college, saying if they really wanted to get a college degree they could do it in winters during their baseball careers.
“I couldn’t disagree with that more,” he said. “Baseball can be taken away from you at any time. I’ll have my brain until I die. You’re finished with baseball at 40. What am I going to do for the next 40 years? I want to do something with my brain.”
Philadelphia selected Schwimer in the 14th round of the 2008 draft after he graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in sociology and statistics, and he immediately began playing. He reached the majors with the Phillies as a reliever in 2011, appeared in 12 games with them that season and 35 games in 2012.
The Phillies traded him to the Blue Jays last February, and he was pitching for their Class AAA minor league team when he developed a sore shoulder last month.
Does Schwimer regret choosing college over baseball?
“I absolutely have no regrets,” he said. “If I had the same decision to make, I’d do it again.”
PIRATES’ PITCHERS TAKE STINGINESS TO NEW LEVEL
The Pittsburgh Pirates, whose record was 12 games over .500 entering Sunday’s game, have four months’ worth of games to lose enough to finish under .500 for the 21st consecutive season. However, they have come up with a new weapon to enhance their chances of finally having a winning season.
Stats Inc. has discovered that the Pirates’ pitching staff is having a super season in limiting opposing batters’ ability to hit the ball where Pirates’ defenders can’t catch it.
Through last Thursday, the Pirates had allowed opposing hitters a .222 batting average (it was .223 through Saturday). Stats found that the Pirates’ against-average was the lowest of any major league team since 1968, the season pitchers had their way with hitters.
That season Cleveland, Baltimore and Detroit staff held opponents under .220.
But there’s more. The Pirates’ average is the lowest for a National League team in the last 100 years. And the Pirates’ average at home, .203, is second among all clubs in the last 90 years, eclipsed by only Cleveland’s .201 in 1968.
Examples of the Pirates’ stinginess this season: A.J. Burnett .199, Jason Grilli .141.
GRANDY NOT BEING MANNY
A news item caught my attention last week. Curtis Granderson, the New York Yankees’ outfielder, was donating $5 million to his alma mater, the University of Illinois-Chicago, for the construction of a $7 million baseball stadium.
The Granderson donation made me think of Manny Ramirez. How could it not have?
When Ramirez was playing for the Boston Red Sox with an 8-year, $160 million contract, he refused to give his alma mater, George Washington High School in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, $10,000 or $20,000 to buy new uniforms and equipment for the current players.
Their uniforms were old and tattered, and they needed new bats, balls and other equipment. The school was in a heavily Dominican area, and Ramirez was the players’ hero.
No one asked Ramirez to pay for the stuff, but it was suggested that it would be a good idea. Ramirez, however, apparently had a dispute (very likely of his own creation) with the team’s coach so he refused to make the donation. With Manny, I guess, it was principle over principal.
For the record, while Ramirez’s contract averaged $20 million a year, Granderson’s 6-year, $41.25 million contract, of which this is the last year, averages $6.9 million, meaning Granderson is giving the school nearly an entire year’s pay.