No one likes a cheater, but Major League baseball players take cheating more personally than other professionals. The fallout on the Houston Astros cheating has been extreme, when you consider that sign-stealing is a time-honored tradition in baseball. The Astros just took it to the next level, using centerfield cameras to steal the catcher’s signals.

Of course they won a World Series using the technology, and that was the worst of it. No one likes a successful cheater, least of all. And perhaps their World Series title should have been confiscated and their batting averages asterisked, but they weren’t. So another season opens and hopefully to less cheating.

In contact sports like football and basketball, every play offers an opportunity for retaliation. Often professionals can do physical damage to their opponents without a referee even noticing. As a result retaliation is less discussed and more enacted. So football and basketball players may sound less vindictive than baseball players, even though they know their way around acts of revenge.

In baseball there are mainly two pressure points for retaliation, the batter at the plate and the pivot man at second base. It is clear some players will seek this form of retaliation, even with a page turned on a new season. Pitchers and base runners have been known to seek revenge months after a perceived  offense. “It’s anger. I feel like every single guy over there needs a beating. It’s wrong. They’re messing with people’s careers.” commented Braves outfielder Nick Markakis.  Astros’ manager Dusty Baker feared that his hitters would be targeted at the plate. Baker is not known as an alarmist. Watch for the “message” pitch to be thrown at a few Astros hitters. Watch for the slide into second base, trying to snag a piece of an Astros pivotman on the double play. The umpires will be watching.

Baseball fans seem to follow the vindictive streak of the players. Astros’ third baseman Alex Bregman took some heat for posing for an Instagram photo with some fans on a couch. “Can’t wait till you get beaned in the face!” wrote jgmckennal6.  “built4 rap” declared, “Your team and players weren’t punished enough, therefore we true MLB fans who care about the integrity of the game will continue to drag you guys through the mud for the foreseeable future.” The comment evoked 169 replies.

Baseball players take personal offense too easily, quickly claiming another player is “showing them up,” if they saunter around the bases or flip their bat when drawing a base on balls or hitting a home run. Yet it looks so petty and makes the players look like juvenile whiners.  Probably they just need an outlet for their frustration, but get fewer opportunities to vent than the contact sports. Just the brushback pitch and the purposeful slide into second.

But that is the nature of the non-contact game. It is the reason many capable football players choose baseball, when their talent allows it. Fortunately less contact, more pure skill. Unfortunately more whining and purpose pitches.

Perhaps the Astros deserve some booing to be reminded they are cheaters, but it is also another season, and presumably the cheating has ended. Let’s get on with. Punishment should have an expiration date.

I have lived in Cardinals country for the last two years and become infected with the local pride of watching the team evolve with only one big-contract star–Paul Goldschmidt–and a new manager with quiet baseball savvy–Mike Schildt, who was NL Manager of the Year in 2019.  Both Schildt and the majority of the Cardinals’ roster grew up in their farm system, developing the character of managers and players with the brand of the organization. From this view they are the anti-Red Sox, who could not compose their pitching rotation from a single home-grown pitcher. They let their only successful farm-grown pitcher, Jon Lester, leave for free agency. Their current staff consists entirely of free agents and trade acquisitions.

I was already making unfavorable comparisons between the Red Sox and the Cardinals last fall, as the Beantowners stumbled their way to the finish line, with no help coming from their farm system. https://wtucker.edublogs.org/2019/09/12/the-red-sox-have-a-bill-to-pay/. My point was that the Cardinals had drafted well and coached well, while the Red Sox were on a short-term development plan. They had no young pitchers ready for prime time.

The St. Louis Cardinals were developing a pitching rotation out of three sterling rookies, and the Red Sox were hoping to offload some of their salary-bloated staff in the Winter. They did, indeed, set Rick Porcello free and traded David Price and some of his salary to the Los Angeles Dodgers.   Over the Winter, they signed a mediocre veteran with almost a 5.00 lifetime ERA (Martin Perez). Meanwhile this morning I received this bulletin from the Cardinals:

Liberatore looks like a bonafide future starting pitcher, having been chosen 15th in the Major League draft a few years ago. He is just the kind of prospect the Red Sox would need, but have failed to acquire.  In their big trade of the season the Red Sox acquired another outfielder to replace Mookie Betts, along with a back-up catcher. The pitcher they expected to get was medically disqualified.

JUPITER, Fla. — For the first time in around two   years, Nolan Gorman and Matthew Liberatore  dueled against each other, with Liberatore on the mound and Gorman at the plate.

But the Red Sox gave no such attention to developing pitchers, like the Cardinals. They are limping into the 2020 season with a vulnerable staff with Chris Sale and Nathan Eovaldi previously unable to finish a season, with Eduardo Rodriguez, a vulnerable arm, and with Martin Peres, an unproven free agent. In the boom years they entered the season with six proven starting pitchers and needed every one of them for the 162-game siege.

I stand at the crossroads of fandom again, weighing locality against loyalty, shrewd management against short-sighted schemes, promising young pitchers against wounded veterans.  As a fan you only expect your team to compete and try to reinforce its weak positions.  I do not see the Red Sox doing either this year. They will not be fun to watch.

Every 40 years a new team? Call me fickle.

“And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay in helping them? I tell you he will quickly grant justice to them” (Luke 18:7-8).

In this parable of Jesus, a woman finally gets her case resolved by relentlessly bothering a judge who could care less about justice.  Jesus compares her to those who cry for justice from God. A parable sanctifying stubbornness.

I don’t know if the fans of the Washington Nationals were praying for justice for a team long-forgotten as ultimate competitors in the World Series, but the team had a relentlessness that caused their rampage through the National League and past the Houston Astros, who had the best regular-season record in baseball. They seemed to have played themselves out of the competition in the first two months of the season, but once they sewed themselves together, they took the Major Leagues by storm.

Max Scherzer and Howie Kendrick, both 35-year-old veterans, exemplified the storm. Scherzer struggled with injuries most of the season and had to abandon his start on Sunday because of seized nerves in his neck. With the relentless encouragement of his wife and the triage of a team doctor and a chiropractor, he was rehabilitated enough to struggle through five innings, seven hits, and two runs, allowing Patrick Corbin and Dan Hudson to finish the job. The man willed himself to perform at a level of mediocrity he would normally disdain, but with a gritty performance to inspire his team mates. Relentless.

Howie Kendrick proved one of the hardest outs in a line-up that included Juan Desoto and Anthony Rendon, two talented young hitters who will appear in more championships, because their future contracts will dictate that. But Kendrick is a 35-year-old retread from the Angels, Dodgers and Phillies, who refused to sit down quietly with two strikes against him. He knew how to foil the best pitches of his opposing pitchers, and he could take the outside pitch to the opposite field, as he proved with his game-winning home run.  As his defensive swing at an outside pitch sent the ball arcing toward the right field stands, the laws of physics or the hand of the divine kept the ball fair, and it clanged against the wing of the foul pole for a home run.  Like Scherzer, Kendrick took his best swat under foul circumstances and made the go-ahead runs out of it.  That was the turning point, though the Nationals went on to score three more runs.

Juan Soto, the twenty-year old rookie, showed he was a force to be reckoned with by launching some majestic clouts, and Anthony Rendon became the prize of free agency with his clutch line drives.   But the battling veterans, Scherzer and Kendrick, reaching the twilight of their careers,  portrayed relentlessness. They battled for the championship, which had eluded each of them for more than a decade,  making a case that the most high judge of baseball was forced to hear.  They inspired a host of unsatisfied dreamers, who sometimes have lost faith that their prayers will ever be answered.

I believe that baseball mirrors life more than any other team sport.

  You can adopt a natural pace of growth.

You can plan on short-term gains for short-term success.

        In Thursday’s St. Louis Post Dispatch (9/12/2019), Jeff Gordon blames Dave Dombrowski for the fall of the Red Sox in 2019 following their World Series Championship season. In truth, the Red Sox succumbed to the short-term success plan since the early days of John Henry, their owner. While their outfield is a paragon of player development, their pitching staff is the wreckage of free agency and expensive trades. The Red Sox have not developed a starting pitcher since John Lester, who was allowed to roam in 2014. Dave Dombrowski merely  perpetuated a neglect of pitcher development in the Red Sox Farm system.

Gordon makes a fair comparison between the management of the Cardinals and the Red Sox to show how player development matters. As I observed in my blog of September 7,

On the list of teams with the top 218 pitching prospects in 2017 the Cardinals ranked fourth in the Majors. Two of those pitchers head up their starting rotation in 2019– Jack Flaherty and Dakota Hudson. Their top prospect, Alex Reyes, has a live, but vulnerable arm. He could still make a difference. [https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2017/5/13/15626852/cardinals-top-pitching-prospects-lance-lynn].

The Red Sox are 27th on this list of pitching prospects, ahead of the Orioles and the Tigers. The results speak for themselves–only Brandon Workman has a  promising future.  Bobby Poyner and Darwinzon Hernandez may prove to be diamonds in the rough, but they are not making anyone forget Craig Kimbrel. No success stories, present or future. [https://wtucker.edublogs.org/2019/09/07/prospects-on-parade/]

I believe success requires planning, collaboration, execution, some luck.

The development of pitchers takes time and excellent coaching. Clearly the Cardinals took the time to develop most of their rotation and bullpen. Their patience is paying off this year. They will likely be in the playoffs, and with their excellent staff, they could go deep.  Their hitting remains the issue, but they did move on the free agent market to get Paul Goldschmidt this year.  They have systematically built a competitive team.

The Red Sox have developed a remarkable outfield and up-the-middle players, but the salaries of their pitching staff could prevent them from keeping Mookie Betts, whose contract is up in 2020. Meanwhile their entire staff is plagued with arm problems, except for Rick Porcello, who is merely a plague.  If they had some young pitchers to replace the few, the gold-plated, the ailing, they could look forward to better times. Bobby Poyner and Darwinzon Hernandez will not fill that bill.

Thus the Red Sox have no recourse but to spend their time and money on young prospects and wait patiently for them to develop. Gordon predicts in today’s article:

. . . Henry is ready for some Cardinals-like stability. Insiders note that the Red Sox are likely to hire a younger person to oversee the baseball operation.

Long before Dave Dombrowksy the Red Sox adopted the short-term growth for short-term gain approach to baseball. The bill is now due for that policy.

    I believe if you plan and play well, there is no failure without redemption.

What have you done for me lately, Dave Dombrowsky? The answer for the Red Sox was “Not enough,” so the three-year tenure of Dave Dombrowsky came to an end today.

Dombrowsky did exactly what he was hired to do: develop a World Series winner. And he re-signed Nathan Eovaldi to bolster the pitching, realizing that a pitching rotation is an ephemeral thing. Over the summer he added Andrew Cashner for the same reason. Eovaldi’s arm did not rise to expectations, nor did the previously-capable Andrew Cashner, and so the Red Sox pathetically slipped out of contention this September.

What Dombrowsky never did was draft and develop good pitching, so that the Red Sox have not had a starting pitcher grow from the Farm since John Lester, whom they let fly the coop in 2014.  The entire starting rotation is composed of free agents or trades from other clubs.  Even  that failure is not only on Dombrowsky, because in 2017 the Red Sox were 27th in the Major Leagues in ownership of the top 218 pitching prospects.  As Tom Verducci observed today:

The farm system, thinned by the trades Dombrowski made, is one of the leanest in baseball. First baseman Triston Casas, 19, may be part of the next winning Boston team as it builds around Rafael Devers and Xander Bogaerts. Maybe Bobby Dalbec, another corner infielder, is a piece, but he’s already 24. Darwinzon Hernandez, 22, has an electric fastball, but his mechanics are so poor that durability as a starting pitcher will be a question. He’s never thrown more than 107 innings in a pro season. [https://sports.yahoo.com/why-red-sox-fired-dave-182053108.html]

Hernandez is a very rough diamond, so no help from the Farm for the depleted rotation.  Even in the recent seven-man patchwork victory over the Yankees, only two of the seven quilt patches were original material: Hernandez and the very erratic Bobby Poynter.

The gold-plated starting rotation is tarnishing: “Chris Sale, David Price and Nathan Eovaldi are owed $292 million, including $79 million next year. All are in various states of physical decline.”[https://sports.yahoo.com/why-red-sox-fired-dave-182053108.html]

The Red Sox can place a pretty formidable offense on the field, but Mookie Betts and J. D. Martinez are up for new contracts, and both will command bank-busting paydays.  There’s a strong sense of having mortgaged the future for early success in 2018.

So one year from the World Series Championship, the Red Sox are re-building from the bottom up.  Hopefully the next GM will have a longer contract and more patience to draw from the owners of Red Sox Nation.

When the season is over, Red Sox fans may mourn the loss of their diamond-studded rotation to injury, but they should be asking who in their Farm system could be “next-up” to replace them? If the raw talent was there, we could be looking at re-building this year, but without those prospects, the team is left to troll the free agent stream again for someone else’s pitchers.

Whether baseball games should be managed with seven pitchers sharing the load, as Alex Cora did Friday night, is beyond consideration. The Red Sox do not have four physically-able starting pitchers. So the game began with Jhoulys Chacin, a pitcher cast off by the Brewers in mid-season. From there, it was “menage á sept” as reported by “The Athletic” today.

Jhoulys Chacin

After Chacin’s first inning, the Red Sox decided to give him one more, and the 31-year-old got three more quick outs. Rather than push their luck, LeVangie and Cora turned to Josh Taylor for the third inning, a bit of next-man-up teamwork to get through the night. Taylor got a groundout and two strikeouts. Next. On came Marcus Walden, who gave up the first Yankees hit in the fourth but worked around it. Next. He turned the ball over to Andrew Cashner. Cashner was tagged for the only run of the night, a Brett Gardner solo homer to right. Next. Ryan Weber took over for two innings and kept the Yankees off the board, largely thanks to Jackie Bradley Jr. throwing a runner out at home. Next. Darwinzon Hernandez had the eighth and, finally, Bobby Poyner the ninth. Piece of cake, just like they drew it up. Sort of. [https://theathletic.com/1191625/2019/09/07/with-little-to-lose-red-sox-throw-it-all-out-there-and-for-the-moment-its-working/]

None of these pitchers has proved consistently reliable till now, although Cashner has shown more promise in the bullpen than in his starting assignments. And Taylor has often been strong in the late innings. The rest of the cast have been a crap shoot, with dice falling exactly right last night. Makes managing a bullpen a great adventure.

Darwinzon      Hernandez

In a year when three high-priced free agents have run amuck (Price and Sales through injury; Porcello through ??) the painful question arises, Where the heck is the Red Sox farm system when it comes to developing pitchers? Among yesterday’s magnificent seven only two were bred from the Farm: Darwinzon Hernandez and Bobby Poyner, both of whom offer erratic performances out of the bullpen.  Hernandez could be a talent when he finds the strike zone.

Brandon Workman

Brandon Workman is the only pitcher bred on the Farm with a promising future. No one in the starting rotation has a Red Sox pedigree.

The extraordinary, talented outfield, the catcher, and half the infield are genuine home bred starters. They have the raw and developed talent that makes you wonder what happened to Position No. 1? Is it that much more difficult to draft and develop a pitcher or is the organization simply inept in developing the single most important position player?

Since moving to St. Louis I have observed a team that develops most of its own pitchers. On the list of teams with the top 218 pitching prospects in 2017 the Cardinals ranked fourth in the Majors. Two of those pitchers head up their starting rotation in 2019– Jack Flaherty and Dakota Hudson. Their top prospect, Alex Reyes, has a live, but vulnerable arm. He could still make a difference. [https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2017/5/13/15626852/cardinals-top-pitching-prospects-lance-lynn].

The Red Sox are 27th on this list of pitching prospects, ahead of the Orioles and the Tigers. The results speak for themselves–only Brandon Workman has a  promising future.  Bobby Poyner and Darwinzon Hernandez may prove to be diamonds in the rough, but they are not making anyone forget Craig Kimbrel. No success stories, present or future.

So we watch September’s Prospects on Parade, hoping to be inspired by one of the auditions of the seventeen bullpen hopefuls. Wishing the home team had a pipeline of talent that could deliver another starter or a stopper in 2020. Keep wishing.

A cool Oct. 25 night

Buckner broke our hearts

A ground ball

rolled through his legs

Letting the Mets back in the Series

They stole from us.

Before the notorious blunder

A batting title,

An All-Star game

Clutch hits

Devotion.

After it

The clip ran over and over our hearts

“Buckner” became a curse.

At the 20th anniversary Buckner was missing.

In the wake of two Red Sox championships

On Opening Day, 2008, finally

He threw out the first pitch

With tears in his eyes.

Full Count

John Dreyfus (b. 1949)

Hunter Museum of American Art,

Chattanooga, Tennessee

“It is the game we play and the game most emulated by those interested in our culture.”

Opening Day means one thing in St. Louis.

Not the opening of the Auto Show, the Flower Show, the Spring Fashion Show, not the launch of the football, hockey or basketball seasons, but BASEBALL.

I love St. Louis.

No preparation for the actual sports season compares with baseball in a Baseball Town.  No other pre-season aligns with the first thaw, home landscaping plans, forced spring bulbs, the outdoor splash of daffodils, tulips, and forsythia. Baseball is the noisy background music to spring. There is hope for the home team like the hope of life springing from the ground.

Boston also loves baseball.

In both Boston and St. Louis the countdown begins in January with packing the equipment truck for Spring Training, announcing the arrival of the equipment truck in Florida, the scheduled arrival of the pitchers and catchers, the workouts of the pitchers and catchers, the interviews with coaches and managers, the staggered arrival of the position players, the interviews with the new players, the early injury reports, all the minutiae that drives other sports fans crazy in the mid-season doldrums of hockey and basketball. Why the fuss about baseball, when even the exhibition games have yet to be played?

The fans of St. Louis and Boston are actually engrossed in the beginnings before the beginning. Long before Opening Day the sports pages rock with advent of Paul Goldschmidt, hopes for contract extensions for Boston’s golden outfield, the bull pen shuffles, the evolving philosophies of hitting. The front pages blast headline promos of the Cardinals and Red Sox in competition with the coverage of the Blues and Bruins struggling for the NHL playoffs. I spent 25 years in Michigan, and the coverage of the Tigers in spring was a whisper by comparison. Admittedly the Tigers have been a team in persistent decline, but the Detroit Red Wings have also been less than inspiring to the citizens of Hockeytown. The Wings create the buzz and the headlines.

At the end of March, when the games are played in earnest, St. Louis and Boston fans are beside themselves. Some will call in sick to sit in the stands in temperatures ranging from 35 degrees in Boston to 50 degrees in St.Louis,  peering through binoculars at the new prospects and gold-plated free agents, rubbing their hands together during the endless pre-game pageantry, hoarsely intoning the Star-Spangled Banner and megaphoning the final two words: Play Ball!  The delirium of a true baseball town, where chilled athletes play the summer game in football weather.

How does the long season keep our attention? Summer comes and goes, and the rhythms of baseball throb in April, through September in a baseball town. St. Louis lights up with the first home stand and when the Cubs first come to town. The same for the Red Sox and when the Yankees come to Fenway Park.  Then pitchers go down with injuries and fresh arms come up from the farm system to replace them.  The enigma of bullpen strategy and the mystery of the slump and the hitting streak engages the sports columnists and their readers. Trade deadlines loom, climax, and pass.  There is aways something to chatter or complain about.

In Major League cities across the country (Hey, Washington, Tampa,  Detroit, Los Angeles) baseball is background music to football, hockey and basketball.  No one is saying “How about them Rays?” in March or August, even when the Tampa Rays are exceeding all expectations.  No one is jamming the ball parks in Cleveland or Los Angeles to see their star player emerge from the disabled list.  The sports pages are full of football rumors and basketball free agent signings.  The National Past Time has passed its time.

So I am happy to settle in a town where baseball still matters.  Moving from Detroit to St. Louis was like crossing an international boundary, with a different language and a new cuisine. Baseball is served year around and the town’s hopes rise and fall with the progress of the Cardinals.  Even though my loyalty remains with the Red Sox after two interstate moves, I have caught spring fever for the Cardinals, and I worry about their struggling young pitchers.  I love the news of the contract extension of Paul Goldschmidt, as well as Mookie Betts.  There is something about a baseball town that makes me feel at home.

Three months have past since Craig Kimbrel’s agent turned down a “qualifying offer” from the Boston Red Sox, and the stellar reliever remains unsigned. Today pitchers and catchers are working out at JetBlue Stadium in Fort Myers, and his failure on the free agent market was called “crazy” by a stellar starter.  Is it collusion on the part of baseball owners and general managers or are Kimbrel, Manny Machado, and Bryce Harper just expecting too much?

Machado and Harper both come packaged with star-sized egos, and their agents may not be bargaining in their best interests. Kimbrel is a different case, as Chris Sale suggests in his brief comments to The Athletic: “You’d just like to see better for him. He’s put in the time, he’s put in the effort, he’s put it on the line. It’s time for somebody to do that for him.”

“The Athletic” suggests that the length of contract could be the deal-breaker in Kimbrel’s case:

Kimbrel, who turns 31 in May and is baseball’s active saves leader with 333, watched this winter as fellow top free-agent relievers like Zack Britton, Andrew Miller and David Robertson all slowly signed. Each of those three consented to shorter two- or three-year deals while Kimbrel is still said to be looking for a longer contract in the neighborhood of five or six years.” https://theathletic.com/816689/2019/02/13/craig-kimbrels-crazy-situation-lingering-on-free-agent-market-has-chris-sale-confused/?source=dailyemail.

So what is the story? Collusion or Contract Demands? Back in November I blogged that Kimbrel’s control could be on the decline, and the Red Sox might be well rid of him, but Chris Sale’s comments got me thinking. Sale is no agitator, and he is a premier pitcher with no ax to grind. Was he sending a message to the Red Sox, when he said, “It’s time for somebody to do that for him”?

Maybe there is a message for both management and employee. The message to management is that Kimbrel deserves better from a team that relied on his services for so many years in the building of a champion. The message to Kimbrel is: “Cut back the term of your contract demands. Pitchers are a fragile commodity. Don’t expect a pricey contract past your prime, into your later thirties.”

The Red Sox will be a better team with Craig Kimbrel, and Kimbrel will be a better pitcher with the strong bullpen support already in place. Time to get back to reasonable expectations on both sides. A three-year contract with some incentives in place could be a fair compromise. Time to listen to the youthful wisdom of Nathen Eovaldi, already quickly signed to a contract.

“I told my agency, even if it’s not the best deal I want to sign early,” Eovaldi said . . .. “Because anything to me is going to be better than where I was at. I didn’t want to have that pressure coming into spring training.” https://theathletic.com/816689/2019/02/13/craig-kimbrels-crazy-situation-lingering-on-free-agent-market-has-chris-sale-confused/?source=dailyemail