Monthly Archives: November 2011

Kansas City Royals bag Broxton

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The Royals have made another pitching addition to their roster as we come out of the Thanksgiving lull and get ready for the coming Winter Meetings.

Former Dodgers reliever Jonathan Broxton has agreed a one-year deal to sign on as Joakim Soria’s set-up man in Kansas City. His proposed signing follows the Royals’ trade for starter Jonathan Sanchez from the Giants earlier in November.

Had the Phillies not jumped in and signed up Jonathan Papelbon, the Royals may have gone for a Jonathan trio, although perhaps a move for the Brewers’ catcher Jonathan Lucroy is on the cards to complete the set another way.

Lucroy is unlikely to be heading to K.C., irrespective of any Jonathan quest, as the Royals have a promising young catcher in Salvador Perez. He was one of the Royals’ prospects that made the jump to the Major Leagues in 2011, alongside the likes of Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas, and there are more on the way.

Royals fans certainly deserve some good news about good players after so many years in the doldrums. There is an exciting youth movement taking place in Kansas that will hopefully put the Royals back into contention in the AL Central in the near future. Adding an established Big Leaguer or two into the mix isn’t a bad idea so long as it doesn’t block any of the young talent from progressing.

Signing Broxton on a one-year contract for a basic salary of approximately $4m (£2,563,000, or £49,290 per week) looks like a good deal for both parties. Broxton gets a chance to rebuild his value after pitching only 12.2 innings in 2011, while the Royals get a pitcher with significant high-pressure experience (dealing with both success and failure) to add to their relatively young pitching corps on a contract that potentially offers a decent reward for little risk.

While it’s far from a blockbuster, it’s a neat move by the Royals.

And potentially it will light the touch paper on a busy period of free-agent signings and trades as we head into December.

MLB ‘early’ games 2011: Part One

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One of the regular features on BaseballGB during the season is my weekly guide to the MLB games that are scheduled to start before midnight UK time.

These are referred to as day games in the States, for the obvious reason that they take place during the day rather than at night. Of course, due to the time difference, they are played during the evening for us in the UK, so I refer to them as ‘early’ games.

I started the ‘early game guide’ because I wanted to plan ahead for the evenings when I could catch a good game and I figured that if I found it useful, other fans in the UK would to.

Thankfully I’ve received lots of comments over the past few years showing that to be true.

With that in mind, I’ve gone through my records for the 2011 season to discover more about the games that we were able to enjoy live at a convenient time in the UK.  In the first of two articles, I explain my ‘early’ game definition and look at the teams that played in the most during the 2011 season.

Explaining the data

I’ve focused on games scheduled for the working week (Monday to Friday inclusive) on the basis that these are the days on which early games matter most for the majority of people. Late night Saturday games are easier to follow live due to being in the middle of the weekend (i.e. the very early hours of Sunday morning) and you can pretty much take it as read that your team will be playing an early game on Sunday so long as they are not playing in the ESPN Sunday Night Game.

My figures are based on what I would call scheduled early games. They are the games that were due to be played before midnight UK time when I checked the fixture list on Monday morning. Games rearranged at short notice during the week haven’t been included for two reasons: 1) I can’t be sure I always added them to the list and I wanted the data to be consistent, 2) a late rearranged fixture isn’t so useful because by their nature they don’t help you plan for the week’s viewing/listening.

The final thing to note is the obvious point that this is just one year’s worth of data. Some home teams are more inclined to play early games, for various reasons, and the way the Interleague schedule changes every year means that a team’s total may go up or down by a few games year-on-year as a result.

The Yankees, for example, played a very rare series at Wrigley against the Cubs in 2011, giving New York an added early game on a Friday that they probably wouldn’t have in a typical year. However, this should be a good general guide.

The top ‘early’ teams in 2011

  1. Chicago Cubs – 36 early games
  2. Tampa Bay Rays – 32 games
  3. Detroit Tigers – 27 games
  4. Oakland A’s – 26 games
  5. San Diego Padres – 25 games

There is no surprise as to the identity of the top early team. The Chicago Cubs play more games under daylight than any other team, largely due to restrictions on the number of night games that they are allowed to stage at Wrigley Field.

Throughout the 2011 season, there were only five weeks in which the Cubs didn’t play at least one early game and one of those was the final shortened week of the season when they played a three-game series in San Diego.

The Cubs are particularly generous towards fans in the UK who want to watch a live game on Friday evening. Of the 23 early games played on a Friday in 2011, 13 involved the Cubs. Tuning into Len Kasper and Bob Brenly on the WGN Cubs broadcast for a 19.20 BST first pitch is always a treat.

Second on the list are the Tampa Bay Rays and their TV commentators, Dewayne Staats and Brian Anderson, are also a lot of fun to listen to. They always give a mention to baseball fans in Europe when one of their games is being broadcast on ESPN America. On one occasion this season, they started joking about how the Rays could become “the UK’s team” and pondered making an offseason trip to spread the word. “This is going to be big!”, Staats joked.

They initially made the rookie mistake of using ‘the UK’ and ‘England’ interchangeably, an error that was subsequently pointed out to them by fans from Scotland and Northern Ireland. As they had been discussing dressing up as Beefeaters earlier in the broadcast (honest), the mention of Scotland prompted Brian Anderson to offer the following statement: “I’m going to tell you something right now. The kilt: that’s where it’s at’.

Questionable fashion advice aside, you can’t go wrong with Staats and Anderson. Add the Rays’ high number of early games to their underdog status and exciting young team and Tampa Bay would have to be a prime contender for any British newcomer trying to pick a team to support.

The Detroit Tigers also merit a strong mention as they have consistently put out a good team over the past few years and give fans plenty of opportunities to follow their games live in the British evening.

The A’s and Padres may be on the west coast, but the extra three hours of time difference doesn’t stop their fans from enjoying a good number of early games at a convenient time either.

Part Two …

Later in the week, we’ll take a look at the teams at the bottom of the list and delve deeper into how the early games fell in 2011 over the days, weeks and months of the year.

An update on Colindale and news of the next Project COBB book

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Update on Colindale

Back at the start of July I described the pressing need to get to the British Library’s newspaper repository at Colindale if you are based in the south-eastern corner of the country. This was triggered by an article I’d come across on The Guardian website from 2010 stating that this north London research institution was set to close before the end of 2012, owing to funding becoming available to transfer the holdings to a more modern facility in Yorkshire.

Later in July, another story appeared on the newspaper’s website. In the article, Roy Greenslade described the answers that historian David Kynaston was able to obtain when he posed the following two questions to a senior member of staff from the library: When is Colindale actually going to close? And what will be the state of access to newspapers after it does? (The answers to the questions were originally reported in a feature on the History Today website.)

“The answer to the first question is relatively straightforward: not before July 2013. The proposed state-of-the-art repository at Boston Spa, to house Colindale’s huge collection of hard-copy newspapers, has not yet started to be built; and given the current fiscal context it struck me… that the eventual closure date may turn out to be further away.

As for the second question he was keen to offer reassurance that post-Colindale there will continue to be access to hard copy as long as there are no surrogates readily available, which is the same as the position now.

Those surrogates are two-fold: the existing stock of microfilms (mainly national titles, but not entirely), which will be transferred to St Pancras and be available to be read on microfilm readers there; and digital surrogates…

Because of digitisation the demand for hard copy is already declining and that trend will intensify.”

That is excellent news for readers who can get to London easily, but of the newspapers for which only a hard copy is currently in existence, a good chunk (roughly 30%) are not in sufficient quality to allow transportation from the Yorkshire site to St Pancras. Moreover, for the 70% that might be transported, it’s not yet clear what limits might be set on daily allowances.

It seems that there is still some urgency to get to hard-copy-only materials, but we can ease our foot off the gas slightly where microfilm is concerned.

 

Next Project COBB book: Nine Aces and a Joker

The Project COBB winter research team is now in place, and the main task we will be tackling is underpinning the next Project COBB book. The book, which has a working title of Nine Aces and a Joker, will chart ten of the most engaging seasons by pitchers in British baseball between 1890 and the present day. The project will bring together contributions from various talented authors (including two of my fellow BaseballGB scribes) on different pitchers in their defining seasons. Fineleaf plans to publish the book in print and digitally late next year.

The first official Research Day for the book will be this Saturday, but I conducted a recce last weekend. This was not only to remind myself of the Colindale procedures, but also to ensure that there was a suitable place to host our post-research discussions. When I informed my fellow researchers of this noble act, one of them returned with the following comment: “I hope you don’t find the pub research too taxing.”

On a more serious note, I thought I might get a bit of a head start on the research for one of the chapters for which the background material was a bit patchy, and I was rewarded with a good omen. I selected a newspaper at random from the five that seemed like they might cover baseball in the particular player’s locality and carefully opened the bound volume somewhere near the middle. Right in front of my nose on the first page I looked at was a report on a game in which my quarry was on the mound. I felt like I’d thrown an inner bull from a 50-foot oche.

New MLB ‘labor agreement’ announced

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Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association held a joint press conference on Tuesday to announce details of a new ‘labor agreement’.

The major North American sports all have their employment and competition rules created via Collective Bargaining Agreements between the governing body of each sport and the respective players’ union. 

MLB’s current agreement expires on 11 December this year and baseball fans can brief a sigh of relief that the sport is not having to go through the trials and tribulations experienced recently in the NHL, NFL and the ongoing NBA lockout, which is threatening the upcoming basketball season.

MLB’s new five-year deal still needs to be finalized, but everything is in place for a seamless transition to the new agreement.

Most of the headline details of the agreement were already known before today:

  • The Houston Astros are moving to the American League West in 2013, allowing MLB to be structured into six divisions each containing five teams.
  • As there will be 15 teams in each league from 2013, interleague play will be in operation for the whole year rather than simply at set periods.
  • The postseason will be increased from eight teams to ten.  There will be two Wild Card places in each league, with everything pointing to the Wild Cards facing each other in a single ‘play-in’ game. MLB Commissioner Bud Selig confirmed in the press conference that he wants to introduce this in 2012, but this is still to be agreed.
  • MLB’s drug-testing programme will be expanded to include tests for hGH.
  • Limits are being placed on the money that teams can spend on the amateur draft, with teams facing stiff penalties if they exceed them.
  • Players outside of the U.S. and under the age of 23 will no longer be free agents available to sign for whoever they like.  They will be subject to a more formalized process, most likely an international draft.  As with the amateur player draft, a team’s spending on international talent will be subject to limits with penalties being in place if a team exceeds them.

These are joined by many changes to key parts of the MLB landscape such as revenue sharing, the competitive balance tax, salary arbitration and free agency. 

Much of the early reaction has focused on the restrictions being placed on teams in respect of spending on amateur and international talent.  In recent years, small market teams such as the Pittsburgh Pirates have allocated substantial sums in this direction, reasoning that the money was better spent on developing potential stars for the future than average Major Leaguers for the present. 

There is also a fear that talented athletes playing more than one sport in North America will be lost to baseball in favour of grid iron or basketball college scholarships if teams can’t offer substantial signing bonuses.

At first glance it does look like smaller-market teams will be hurt by those changes, but we have to look at the whole new agreement in the round, rather than picking out separate parts. 

Some small market teams have spent heavily on amateur talent to take advantage of the current system, yet in future it may be there are other opportunities for them to take advantage of, and it might not be necessary for them to spend such huge sums to gain that premium young talent in the first place.

Of course, you then have to consider the impact on the amateur talent.  Even if the very best players still receive a decent sum, those lower down the pecking order are likely to feel the pinch.

We’ll have to wait and see how all of the changes play out over the next few years before we can really judge their impact.

Many writers will be picking apart the new agreement over the next couple of days, but there are a couple of points worth picking up here in the European/International context.

Changes to the process of acquiring international talent will affect European players, of course.  The exact process has not yet been agreed, with the press release stating “by December 15, 2011, the parties will form an International Talent Committee to discuss the development and acquisition of international players, including the potential inclusion of international amateur players in a draft or in multiple drafts”.

Players will have to register with the Scouting Bureau to be eligible to sign with a team and the level of their signing bonus, whether it turns out to be a draft signing bonus or not, will be affected by the spending limits that teams will be under.  Depending on how those limits are set, it may be a while before we see another deal similar to when the Minnesota Twins gave 16 year old German outfielder Max Kepler-Rozycki an $850,000 signing bonus in 2009.

The other ‘international’ highlight in the press release is featured in the ‘Other’ section at the end.  Part (d) states “the parties will agree upon a comprehensive international play plan in which Clubs and Player will visit countries in which games have not been staged in the past”.  Again, we don’t know any further details about what that will actually entail, but it’s good to see another firm commitment to promoting the sport in new countries.

I’ll be taking a closer look at some of the other parts of the new agreement in the coming days, as well as starting to plan some substantial changes to some of my Baseball Basics for Brits articles.

Moneyball on BBC 5 Live this Thursday

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As the film of Moneyball heads to cinemas in the UK, there have been a batch of newspaper articles about Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s.

Most have focused on whether the analytical approach taken by the A’s and others could be successfully applied to traditional British sports.

This theme will be explored in further depth on BBC 5 Live at 21.00 on Thursday (24th).

The programme is scheduled to last for an hour and a half and promises to be a rare opportunity to listen to baseball being discussed as part of the wider sporting landscape on the UK airwaves, rather than as a mere curiosity.

If you can’t listen to the show live, it is very likely that it will be available on the BBC iPlayer for seven days after it airs.

It’s good to see baseball getting a bit of publicity out of the Moneyball film and it will be interesting to hear how the subject of analysing sports is covered in this programme.

Dutch outfielder Greg Halman killed

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There is tragic news coming out of the Netherlands today. Greg Halman, the Seattle Mariners and Netherlands outfielder, reportedly has been killed in an incident in Rotterdam.

Full details are not yet known, but reports state that he was fatally stabbed.

Halman’s Major League debut came on 23 September 2010 and, as I wrote about at the time, it was a memorable game.  Although Halman went 0-for-4, his teammate Ichiro set a Major League record by notching his 200th hit of the season for the tenth consecutive time.  Additionally, Jose Bautista hit his 50th home run of the season in the same game.

I noted that “Bautista has now hit the fifty mark once and that alone puts him in the record books.  Maybe someday Greg Halman will earn a mention in there too”.

Sadly he will never get the chance.

It is a sad day for all European baseball fans.  Halman’s achievement at making it all the way to the Major Leagues was celebrated by many and it is a dreadful shame that he will never be able to fulfill his potential, both in baseball and in life in general.

Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella

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Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella (First Mariner Books, 1999), 265 pages

The 1989 film Field of Dreams is regularly cited as one of the greatest baseball-themed films of all time.

Its popularity transcends an audience of pure baseball fans. The film normally even gets a couple of airings every year on British terrestrial TV (in fact it was shown on ITV4 earlier in the week), making it one of the few baseball-related things that blends into the popular culture of a traditionally baseball-sceptic nation.

The iconic phrase ‘if you build it, he will come’ – normally wrongly quoted as ‘if you build it, they will come’ – has been latched on to by many Brits who perhaps don’t know it’s related to Field of Dreams.

Even less will know that its true source is a novel, first published in 1982, called Shoeless Joe.

I read Shoeless Joe after having watched Field of Dreams on a number of occasions and I suspect most people minded to read W.P. Kinsella’s novel will be in the same position.

Everyone will have their own view on film adaptations of novels. As someone who is much more a book person than a film person, I will normally want to interpret the novel in my mind rather than rely on a specific director’s version. One of the joys of reading novels is the way your own imagination plays an active part in the experience and the lack of that involvement – as I watch films, at least – is one of the reasons why that form of entertainment has never really drawn me in.

Consequently, I lowered my expectations slightly before reading the novel. Not only was there the obvious obstacle of already knowing the main storyline, but the characters and scenes had already been painted for me.

The first mention of the lead character, Ray Kinsella, immediately brought Kevin Costner’s appearance in the film to mind. It’s difficult to say whether that’s an endorsement of Costner’s casting or the fact that his portrayal of the character is familiar and therefore seems ‘right’ in a way that it might not have done had I read the book first.

What I can state is that, whatever the reason, it didn’t reduce the enjoyment of reading the book at all. Had I been more ambivalent towards Field of Dreams then my opinion might be different; however, I’m very fond of the movie and the familiarity with the characters as they are portrayed in it, and the main storyline itself, didn’t prove to be a barrier at all.

I’m sure part of the reason for this is that Shoeless Joe provided me with exactly what I was hoping for, but was a little cautious of expecting. The novel takes what I enjoyed about Field of Dreams and enriches it.

Field of Dreams is a more concentrated version of Shoeless Joe. It simplifies the storyline somewhat, reducing the number of characters and sub-plots involved.

By reading Shoeless Joe, you meet new people and are taken down additional paths. It’s basically the story you know, but with additional elements to it that allow the key themes in the book – following dreams, holding on to memories, reaching out to the past – to be explored further. There is a deeper background story, more detail in the main scenes to lose yourself in and the characters are more richly drawn.

In short, if you’ve enjoyed watching Field of Dreams, you will find reading Shoeless Joe just as enjoyable, if not more so. What’s more, I borrowed my copy from the local library, so this may be a rare baseball-related book that you can find relatively easily in the UK.

It’s certainly worth hunting down a copy; however easy or difficult that task may be.

Have you read “Shoeless Joe”? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Can you recommend any other similar books? If so, let us know.

Great Britain Baseball Senior Team tryout details announced

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Recruitment plans for the Great Britain Baseball Senior National Team have been revealed today ahead of an exciting year of international baseball events in 2012.

Tryout events will be staged in London, New York, San Diego and Toronto to help shape the rosters competing at the 2012 European Baseball Championships in September and the World Baseball Classic qualifying events at the end of the year.

In recent years, the Great Britain national team effort has aimed to bring together young talent in the UK with players who have experience playing around the world.

This approach has seen Team GB claiming a silver medal at the 2007 European Championships and competing against leading international teams such as Cuba and Japan in the 2009 Baseball World Cup.

The latest recruitment drive will begin in San Diego on 8 January 2012 and the full details from the press release are copied below.

Team GB is recruiting for the World Baseball Classic

The Great Britain Baseball Senior National Team is recruiting talented ballplayers from all parts of the globe.

In late 2012, Team GB will compete at the European Championships in Holland and the World Baseball Classic qualifying rounds. The British Federation is assembling a competitive roster to help them win both competitions, and they are calling for all British ballplayers with high school, collegiate or professional experience – living in the UK or further afield – to contact the coaching staff.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to represent Great Britain at the most elite and prestigious level,” said Jason Greenberg, General Manager of Team GB. “Our players travel to fascinating places and compete against the world’s top talents, and the WBC and the Euros will provide unique exposure to MLB and international scouts.”

Team Captain Brad Marcelino added, “We have a good mixture of personalities that love to get after it and compete for every pitch. Our team has a history of winning and playing above outsiders’ expectations. We will be facing opponent rosters comprised of mostly MLB and ex-MLB players, and we are prepared to take GB to the next level in 2012. No competitive ball player will want to pass this up, as the experience of playing for your country is one you will never forget.”

ELIGIBILITY TO PLAY IN THE WBC

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association set the eligibility requirements for the World Baseball Classic. Each player on the GB roster must meet at least one of the following criteria:

1) Holds British citizenship and carries a valid passport
2) Is a permanent legal resident in the UK
3) Was born in the UK or British territories
4) Is a direct descendant of a British citizen
5) Has a parent who was born in the UK or British territories
6) Is eligible for British citizenship or to hold a UK passport

The full eligibility rules as stipulated by World Baseball Classic Inc. can be found online at:
http://web.worldbaseballclassic.com/about/rules.jsp#player_eligibility

ELIGIBILITY TO PLAY IN THE EUROS

In order to represent Great Britain in a European (CEB) competition, players must:

  • Hold British citizenship
  • Have a valid UK passport

2012 EVALUATIONS AND COMPETITIONS

GB Baseball is scheduling tryout events for potential recruits in England, the United States and Canada. The first event will take place at the University of San Diego on Sunday 8 January. Any player with high school, collegiate or professional experience who is eligible to represent Britain in the World Baseball Classic or in European competition is encouraged to attend.

GB Baseball West Coast Tryouts
Cunningham Stadium
University of San Diego
Sunday 8 January 2012
1pm – 6pm

Additional evaluation events will be held in the Toronto, New York and London areas in April or May 2012. Specific dates and venues will be announced shortly after the winter holidays. Visit www.gbbaseball.com to sign up for the Team GB newsletter.

REGISTER TO TRYOUT / CONTACT THE STAFF

If you are interested in representing Great Britain or attending an evaluation event please contact Brian Essery (GB Coach and Recruitment Director) and Jason Greenberg (General Manager) at recruitment@gbbaseball.com.

Pre-registration for the 2012 evaluation events is mandatory.

2012 promises to be an exciting year for the Great Britain Baseball Senior National Team.  If you meet the above criteria and want to give yourself a chance to be part of it, make sure to get in contact with Brian and Jason.

MLB manager vacancy: managerial experience not required

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When veteran St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa called it quits while World Series ticker tape danced in the air, he created yet another managerial vacancy in what is proving to be an early offseason of considerable change in the manager/Front Office ranks.

Having managerial experience might normally be seen as an essential requirement before filling out the application form and sending in the CV.  However, based on the first two appointments of the early offseason, direct experience has been considered irrelevant to the decision-making process.

The Chicago White Sox led the way with the surprise appointment of Robin Ventura.  He hasn’t managed or coached at any professional level since retiring as a player in 2004 and even admitted that he was surprised when General Manager Kenny Williams put forward the idea of him taking over from Ozzie Guillen after the outspoken Venezuelan moved on to Miami. 

Williams was in no doubt that Ventura was the right man for job, as he made clear when the appointment was announced. 

“I wanted someone who met very specific criteria centred around his leadership abilities. Robin Ventura was that man. His baseball knowledge and expertise, his professionalism, his familiarity with the White Sox and Chicago and his outstanding character make him absolutely the right person to lead our clubhouse and this organization into the seasons ahead”.

These sentiments have been replicated following the announcement of Mike Matheny’s appointment as the new Cardinals manager on Monday. General Manager John Mozeliak spoke of Matheny’s “leadership, his passion, his intelligence and his work ethic, all of these assets will lead to his success as manager of the Cardinals”.  

Matheny comes to the job in a very similar position to that of Ventura.  Both represented their respective team as a player and had advisory roles in their organization.  They know what it’s like to be part of their club, they know how the local fanbase and media interacts with their team and, perhaps more importantly than anything, the Front Office knows exactly what they are like as people and leaders.

‘Leadership’ has been the watchword, with the assumption being that former players who can put a big tick in that box will succeed as a manager.  There’s good reason to think that this assumption is correct.  Much of the day-to-day, decision-making and tactical work that a manager is involved with should already be familiar for players who have been involved in the game for years with their eyes, ears and minds open.  By all accounts, Matheny and Ventura were always diligent, intelligent, hardworking players.  Continue reading →