Wednesday, August 10, 2005

 

The Night of the Long Knives

I have not yet made a post about Larry Krueger. I had been mentally composing one, trying to find a balanced way to take what I thought would be an unpopular stance.

Well, the heck with that.

These are dark days. Last night, KNBR fired Larry Krueger, morning show producer Tony Rhein and veteran program director Bob Agnew. This was six days after KNBR vice president Tony Salvadore suspended Krueger for his "brain-dead Caribbean hitters" remark, and stated that Krueger would not lose his job.

So what changed?

Sunday night on ESPN's "Outside the Lines," Felipe Alou was interviewed about the situation. He made a comment that Larry Krueger was, get this, a "messenger of Satan." This was one of a series of hyperbolic statements by Alou, including swearing to take the issue to the president of the Dominican Republic, and that Krueger had offended "hundreds of millions," a number which exceeds both the population of the Caribbean Sea and the audience of KNBR.

Tuesday morning, on KNBR's morning show, the hosts poked fun at Alou's "messenger of Satan" comment by mixing that sound bite in with some South Park sound bites. That apparently was the last straw for Salvadore, who then proceeded to clean house with a vengeance. I'm sure that the wide support Krueger was getting from KNBR's other hosts and listeners only made him more upset.

So now making fun of Felipe Alou is a firing offense. That, my friends, is nonsense. Krueger's remarks were completely out of line, and his suspension was deserved; but Felipe Alou is not a saint, nor is he above reproach or even ridicule. The "messenger of Satan" crack was over the top and deserved to be mocked. Krueger was only fired because people took his side, and even dared to suggest that maybe Felipe was getting a little ridiculous in his remarks.

I read this morning on Baseball Primer, from someone claiming to have inside knowledge, that Bob Agnew was let go because he refused to carry out the order to fire Krueger. If so, I applaud him for being the only guy in KNBR management with balls.

On TV last night, Gary Radnich said that the Giants did not pressure KNBR to carry out these firings yesterday. I disagree. The entire Giants organization, from Sabean on down, was emphatic in calling for Krueger's head. That pressure had a lot to do with yesterday's firings. By implication, the Giants' position is that Felipe Alou is not to be mocked.

I say that is utter bullshit. Krueger's remarks deserved a suspension, deserved to be roundly denounced, but it should not have been a firing offense. The man had a clean record after eight years in employment with the station. One mistake should not undo the man's entire career and reputation. For God's sake, he spent most of his rant praising and defending Alou! But Felipe didn't want to hear the context. He didn't want to hear any apologies, or admissions of wrongdoing. He could have taken the high road, but he didn't. He wanted blood, and he got it. I hope he's happy. (And don't tell me he was just trying to raise awareness with his comments. About 20% of his comments were about raising awareness, and the rest were about getting revenge.)

As for me, I'm done. The Giants are unwatchably bad, for far more reasons than Krueger listed. I can't watch a team that's managed by a thin-skinned hypocrite who thinks he's above criticism or humor. I can't watch an organization that spends more time worrying about one slip of the tongue than who's taking care of Barry Bonds' rehab. I can't. So I'm done with the team for this year. I'm going to step away from commenting on this train wreck and move onto other things I've been meaning to write about.

I have disabled comments in this particular case, because the firestorm is already going on in enough places on the Net. I understand that many reasonable people will disagree with my opinion here; I respect your disagreement. If you want to send me comments privately, please do so by e-mail.

Jefferson 9:10 AM

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

 

The Best Laid Plans

Big shocker--Barry Bonds doesn't think he'll make it back this year. And by "big shocker" I mean "no surprise."

Oh, what a glorious mess this is. Here are the standings in the NL Least as of right now. Viewer discretion is suggested.

San Diego 51-54
Arizona 52-55
LA Dodgers 47-58
San Fran. 45-59
Colorado 37-67

Let us imagine. Let us imagine a season in which Big Barry's knees didn't implode. Let us imagine a season in which Bonds played, and was about as productive as he was last year. How many more wins would the Giants have? We can figure this out with WARP, something I brought up yesterday to confuse people.

Last year, Bonds had a WARP3 number of 15.0. That means Bonds, all by himself, was worth 15 wins more than your average replacement player (say, Adam Shabala). We use WARP3 here instead of WARP1 because WARP3 is adjusted not just for that particular season, but for all time. Since we're comparing two different seasons here, we need to do that.

If Bonds was healthy, Pedro Feliz would have been the odd man out in the outfield. This year, Pedro has a WARP3 score of 2.3. He's a little over 2 wins better than replacement. So, last year's Bonds is worth 13 wins more than this year's Pedro Feliz.

Of course, we've only played two-thirds of a season, so let's call that 9 wins. Let's ding Barry a couple of wins because of aging, and say that so far, Bonds would have added 7 wins to the Giants total. Here's your NL West standings in our little fantasy now:

San Fran. 52-52
San Diego 50-55
Arizona 51-56
LA Dodgers 46-59
Colorado 36-68

The Giants are now in first place. A shaky first place, but first place!! That's how much Bonds' absence has hurt the team.

You might notice that each of the other teams somehow have one win less, too. Why? Because the additional seven wins for the Giants have to come from their opponents. The Giants play roughly one-third of their games against the NL West. It's close enough for government work.

The other half of the plan that failed was assuming Jason Schmidt would be himself. This year, he's about 5 wins behind where he was at this time last year. If he had maintained his quality, and Bonds had not been hurt, the Giants would have a healthy 7-game lead. Then the Giants would not have needed to trade away four young players for two overpaid veterans, and everyone would be much happier.

(Note: Grant over at McCovey Chronicles beat me to the punch on this today. Kudos to his Assotron for being faster than my methods!)

Jefferson 3:07 PM

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Monday, August 01, 2005

 

Randy Winn

Dear Randy Winn,

Welcome to the Giants. I wish you all the best now that you are part of the team. None of the following has anything really to do with you, personally.

But what the hell? This trade was completely pointless.

To evaluate any trade, you need to look at who the new guy is replacing in the starting lineup, not just who he was traded for. According to Felipe Alou, Winn is our new starting center fielder, replacing Jason Ellison. Allow me to geek out here and compare some sabermetric stats, courtesy of Baseball Prospectus:

Player       EQA    FRAR    WARP1
Winn        .263     13      3.0
Ellison     .253     12      2.2

First, a brief word about what these numbers are.

EQA is "Equivalent Average," which is a single measure of offensive productivity per out, adjusted for the player's league, home park, team pitching, and perhaps phase of the moon, in the context of the 2005 season. (There's another EQA that adjusts for how this season stacks up against all the other seasons, but we're analyzing 2005 here.) League average EQA is always .260.

FRAR means "Fielding Runs Above Replacement." This is how many runs a guy saves with his glove over your typical replacement-level player. This is NOT adjusted for position, and centerfielders are assumed to be worth 10 runs more than corner outfielders. Winn has been playing left field this year, so Ellison is actually 9 runs "better" than Winn in this comparison.

WARP1 means "Wins Above Replacement Player." This is how many wins a guy is worth, compared to any old replacement you can get, adjusted for the conditions of the current season.

So, to make a long story short, after you crunch all the numbers, Randy Winn is worth about 8/10 of a W, over the course of a whole season. Projecting this forward to the last two months of this year, we can expect the Giants to win about 0.25 more games when all is said and done.

Of course, Winn might get really hot with the bat, but he might also slump, like Ricky Ledee. He might actually be a downgrade on defense, since he's better suited for left field than center. And he is more expensive than Ellison -- costing about $1.25 million for the rest of 2005, compared to Ellison's $105,000. Also, Winn has a mutual option for 2006, which will cost between $3.75 million and $5 million, depending on who picks up the option. Indications are the Giants intend to keep Winn for next year, so pencil him in for a cool $5 million. Next year, Ellison is going to be making less, I would guess.

Are you beginning to see why I say this trade is pointless? No? Let's continue.

Ellison is 27. He is at the peak of his skills, most likely. Winn is 31. He is past the usual peak, and can be expected to only get worse in the future.

So the team is now older, more expensive, and not really a whit better. And I haven't even talked about who we gave up. Even if we got Winn for free, as if by magic, this move is pretty well pointless. When you consider that the Giants are now worse off at backup catcher, and have one fewer pitching prospect than before, this trade is just awful.

To my amateur eyes, the three biggest needs the Giants have is starting pitching, power, and outfield defense. This move alleviates none of those needs, and has a chance of actually hurting the rotation down the road if Foppert regains his pre-surgery form.

So, Randy, no pressure, but in order to make Sabean look good, you'd better go on a tear for the rest of this year and next.

Jefferson 11:16 AM

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