New Year, New "Kick-ass Baseball Analysis" Thread. 'Nuff Said.

Of course, looking @ the Oakland OF he came up w/, seems he was sharing real estate w/ Dwayne Murphy & Tony Armas. So maybe he played CF a lot more than I thought. Unfortunately, BaseballReference.com doesn't distinguish which OF positions Rickey played prior to 1997.

*Brian Cashman still "doesn't sweat the small stuff": the Yanks have no business (just sentiment) in making Bernie a 4th OF/DH this year, which could really cost them if he spells Sheff/Matsui/Giambi as often as Torre is threatening.

*Jonah Keri: "Omar Minaya sweats the small stuff less than anyone." If mets get 87-88 wins and end up missing innings from Seo/Benson, and Reyes hits leadoff all year, that could cost them the playoff spot.

*Steven Goldman: Willie Randolph is expert in putting players in situations where they can't succeed.

*The Bosox have better secondary pitching options (Papelbon, Jon Lester) than anyone except maybe Oakland.

*Armchair diagnosis from medically educated BP people: Zack Greinke has Asperger's syndrome. Nothing official other than he's being treated by a sports psychologist.

*Someone (Neil deMause?) sees A's winning West fairly easily. Of the shit that seems to work most often in the postseason, they have 3-5 possible Gold Glove winners, a great rotation, and Street.

*Orlando Hudson is among the top 5 defensive players; Jays blew it.

*Staff divided on whether USA (players and fans) will care more about the WBC in '09. Biggest March obstacle is not conditioning but NCAA hoops (bracket-checking increases American web traffic 40% this month).

*Will the 2008-10 AL East power be the Rays? Their rising executives have been New Analysis-schooled all along.

*The post-Beelzebud commissioners will enter the office knowing they're theowner's representative.

*No one knows how the CBA talks will turn out next winter, but Goldman says the owners fully expected a shutdown last time; Fehr blinked because of the war in '03, and that won't happen again.

*Goldman: if Aaron Small is eminently hittable per normal this year, will he lose religion?

Martinez Stribg in Spring Debut for Mets

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=4921

Twins pitchers have reduced their job to its bare elements: throw strikes. They issued just 348 walks last year, the lowest figure by an AL pitching staff since 1919. Almost the entire staff returns, bolstered by the addition of young starters Francisco Liriano and Scott Baker, who won’t do much to add to the walk total. Walking so few hitters while sustaining a solid home-run rate puts the Twins way ahead in the run-prevention game; they should challenge the A’s for fewest runs allowed in the AL this year.

They’ll score more than enough to make that a winner. Terry Ryan is relying heavily on better years from Justin Morneau and Jason Bartlett, but he also made moves to upgrade lineup holes last year, bringing in Luis Castillo to play second and Rondell White to DH. Neither is a star, but each provides OBP and either speed or power, helping to fill out a lineup that had far too many near-automatic outs in 2005. It’s not an overpowering offense, but it will push past 700 runs; the apparent return of Jason Kubel adds a legitimate #3 hitter to the mix.

John Dewan was furious. In November, when the defending champion Chicago White Sox traded their outstanding center fielder, Aaron Rowand, to the Philadelphia Phillies for the plodding slugger Jim Thome, Dewan was certain his favorite team had bungled its primary off-season transaction.

"I told everyone I knew that this was not a good move," Dewan recalled.

These were not the ravings of a smarty-pants fan, or a knee-jerk vote for South Side status quo. As it turns out, Dewan probably knows more about Rowand's defense than the White Sox, the Phillies and even Rowand himself.

As the founder of Baseball Info Solutions, a statistics firm based in Bethlehem, Pa., Dewan has developed what some industry insiders consider the pre-eminent system for evaluating baseball glove work. Skeptics would liken this to the sports version of a beautyometer; eyeing shortstops and center fielders has generally been the beholder's aesthetic province. Yet Dewan's approach makes this inexact science far more precise while foreboding some frowns for White Sox pitchers.

Though Neanderthal announcers and executives continue to rate defenders based on errors and fielding percentage (the rate at which errors are not made), people have recognized since the 1870's how flawed these numbers are. A fielder's job is not to avoid errors, but to make as many plays as possible. Even a hopeless perfectionist must admit that it's worth having a left fielder drop one ball for a two-base error if he also reaches nine others that another would not, saving nine doubles.

Problem is, no statistics have come along to record, case by case, which fielders convert which batted balls into outs.

Baseball Info Solutions is doing just that. By watching video of every major league game for the last three seasons and assessing the speed and location of every hit on an 8000-pixel grid, it has assembled a vast database of each fielder's performance. The scoring system is simple: If a fielder converts a chance that the typical fielder converts 70 percent of the time, he gets a +0.3; if he fails on what is a 20 percent shot, he gets a –0.2. The season total of these figures estimates how many aggregate outs the fielder accounted for above or below average.

Rowand, who impressed on defense last season with few meaningful statistics to show for it, actually led all major league outfielders in 2005 with a +30, meaning he saved the equivalent of 30 singles and extra-base hits from falling in the outfield. On offense, that would translate to 60 points in batting average and about 100 points in slugging percentage. The three Gold Glove winners — Vernon Wells (+4), Torii Hunter (+5) or Ichiro Suzuki (+7) — did not fare nearly as well.

What does this mean for the Rowandless White Sox? That their run prevention may suffer significantly with an unproven rookie, Brian Anderson, in center field. Meanwhile, the Phillies and their undoubtedly grateful pitchers received a vast upgrade: Rowand's predecessor, Kenny Lofton (+1), had been merely average at turning potential hits into outs. The Yankees will enjoy a similar boost from center fielder Johnny Damon, who was an average –3 over three years. Bernie Williams was the major leagues' worst at –78.

This system, applied to every position but catcher, has been used silently by several teams since 2003, most notably Boston. It was after the Baseball Info Solutions method confirmed the decline of Nomar Garciaparra in 2004 that the Red Sox traded for the high-ranking defender Orlando Cabrera, whose hit-saving glove helped them to the World Series championship. Twelve teams now purchase data from the company in hopes of being a step ahead of clubs that stubbornly rates defense by errors or traditional scouting.

"If you say that a hitter has 40 home runs or a pitcher has a 2.41 E.R.A., people know what that means," Dewan said. "If I tell you a fielder has a .982 fielding percentage, very few people — normal people — can tell you what that means. If you say a shortstop makes 4.5 plays per game, there's no frame of reference. Our mission was to create something that has some meaning, that instantly gives that frame of reference whether someone was above or below average."

After distributing this data only to clubs for three years, Dewan has published it in "The Fielding Bible" (Acta Sports), which includes other new fielding measures, like the extra bases taken off outfielders' arms and the percentage of bunts fielded successfully by first and third basemen. (Alex Rodriguez fans, beware.)

Fielding is widely considered the next statistical frontier. Starting tonight with the season-opening game between the White Sox and the Cleveland Indians, Stats LLC will track first basemen's scoops, which can save errors by fellow infielders.

Branch Rickey, who spent the first half of the 20th century as one of the game's most innovative statistical minds, threw up his hands and said, "There is nothing on earth anybody can do with fielding." Perhaps he would have loathed the Rowand trade as much as Dewan did. Because he would have loved this new evidence as to why.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Rivera absolutely needed to be in Tuesday’s game. He goes an inning, and if he throws 15 or fewer pitches, or close to that and the Yankees score in the tenth, he goes a second inning. Then you move down the list to the Scott Proctors of the world. And not having pitched Tuesday night, then he absolutely had to pitch Wednesday night in the eighth, rather than allowing the guy with one fluke season in the last seven years blow the game....

For 50-odd years, from the advent of relief pitching as a strategy through the 1970s, teams turned to their best non-starter in almost any situation where the game was in doubt after the sixth inning. When I was working on the Jack Morris Project three years ago, I was astounded by the reliever usage from the late 1970s. Pitchers would routinely go three or more innings out of the bullpen, and sometimes five or six if they were pitching well. The best relievers were often used with the team trailing by a run, and as late as 1979, there was no automatic funneling of save situations to a single pitcher. I’m young enough that I don’t remember watching this kind of usage, and I’m guessing a large percentage of the readership doesn’t, either. Take an afternoon sometime and go through your favorite team’s games from that period on Retrosheet (God bless Retrosheet!). It’s a fascinating exercise, and an eye-opener for those of us whose awareness of baseball is largely post-Herman Franks.

I’m not necessarily advocating a return to the patterns of the ‘70s—-pitching is a much different beast these days now that almost every player is a threat to drive a ball out of a ballpark—-but the thinking behind that usage was correct. The use of a closer, the treating of the best reliever as a hothouse flower to be protected and not a weapon to be used, is routinely costing teams games, on the field, almost every single day. It’s a significant reason why the Yankees are 1-2.

http://www.slate.com/id/2139937/?nav=tap3

Not so much kickass, but it's always nice to read someone cheering on great players rather than, you know, whining nonstop like other sportswriters.

Sacrifice bunting with hitters in the top three lineup spots with two men on and no one out in the first five innings of a game is practically trying to lose, like walking Juan Encarnacion to get to Albert Pujols or putting Isiah Thomas in charge of transactions.

Think of it this way: if the notion of sacrifice bunting had never been invented, would someone bother coming up with it today? If they did, would they act as if the tactic represented all that was good with the world? See, laying down sacrifices is tied into the antiquated notion that there's some "right" way to play baseball, that "small ball" is somehow morally superior to other approaches. In fact, there is no right or wrong, and the optimal approach has changed over time, as rule sets, external conditions and the natural evolution of skills have developed. In the nine-plus run environment of today, bunting should be limited. Acknowledging that and folding that into decision making is "smart ball," not reflexively bunting because that's the way they did it when you were coming through the Dodgers' system in '66.

There's a book in the idea that so much of the stagnation of baseball today is the inability for people both inside and outside the game to get past the 1960s. There was a seven-year period when the physical conditions--high mounds, big strike zones--changed the relationships among outs, bases and runs. That game is long gone. (The idea also extends to the notions of pitcher workloads, and a handful of other areas.) Today, everyone can hit for power, outs are incredibly precious, and throwing them away [with inappropriate bunting] is incompetence.

Interesting, if somewhat obvious article.

I can’t be the only one to envision a scenario that has the Cubs beating the Cardinals 10-0 in Game 7 of the NLCS, when Wrigley Field is suddenly deluged with a rainstorm in the fourth inning, and the game is called off. If you think Cubs fans treated Steve Bartman cruelly…they’ll probably drag weatherman Tom Skilling out of his house and toss him into a vat of boiling oil.

The solution here is so obvious that it’s almost not worth describing. ALL games that are postponed will be considered “suspended games,” and will be resumed from the exact point that the game was stopped. If the score is 14-0 in the top of the ninth, or if the game is scoreless in the bottom of the first, the game needs to be completed.

It would eliminate shenanigans like a team winning in the top of the fifth purposely making outs to get to the bottom of the inning before the rains came, or a team that's losing in the bottom of the fifth taking their sweet time between pitches while the rains come down.

"...the real answer to this team's rotation issues is in their bullpen, and the sooner they just accept that Aaron Heilman is the third starter this rotation otherwise lacks, the better for their prospects now and into the postseason. Futzing around with the Olivers, Limas, and Jeremi Gonzalezes of the world is not going to fix the rotation, and finding good pen help is much more easily done. If Willie Randolph and Rick Peterson are dismissing the suggestion out of hand, it's worth bringing up the folly of relying on their own experience too heavily. Instead, a little bit of recognition of a capacity for error needs to be acknowledged, particularly concerning Peterson's part in getting Zambrano for Kazmir.

The bullpen might seem shallow, but that's not really the case. Beyond closer Billy Wagner, Duaner Sanchez has been fine, Chad Bradford and Pedro Feliciano have their situational uses. The problem has been turning around Jorge Julio, because while he's doing a much better job of throwing strikes, he's also still doing a great job of catching too much of the plate in a way that only creates instant happiness (and souvenirs) amongst bleacher creatures.

Enter Bell, who you might hope could help shore up the pen after notching 20 Ks in 13.1 IP at Norfolk. As we noted in this year's edition of the annual, Bell was among the most unlucky pitchers in baseball last season when it came to BABIP, but if he's finally harnessed his fastball/split combo, he could wind up being the second quality setup man the pen would seem to require to reassure Randolph's anxieties over moving Heilman to the rotation. We can certainly hope so, even if you aren't tired of seeing the Braves win--I'd much rather see the Mets take their best shot than allow their season to be poisoned by the contributions of Jose Lima and his ilk."

It's a clean pursuit of the record by maybe the greatest home run hitter ever. And whether we admit it or not, we want that — we need it. We believe in baseball. And although it's somehow easier to boo in the face of Bonds' success, deep down, we really love to see him succeed.

Look at the fans in Philly: As the ball left Bonds' bat, booing turned to "oohing" as the ball flew upward and outward into the depths of the third deck. Fans stood to witness, and their jeers turned to cheers as the man, Barry Bonds, who played for the other team, put a mammoth steroid-free run on the board. (Maybe the other 712 were the same.)

Ironically, in a nation whose judicial system says we're all innocent until proven guilty, we like to think of him as guilty — even if he just hit an innocent home run. And when he hits it that far, we're reminded that the cynics who say he has "lost" his power are just wrong. That shot didn't need an extra " 'roid-assisted 6 feet" to get out of the ballpark.

Steroids or not, this man has more than the ability, he has the talent, to be the greatest home run hitter in baseball history. I think he is. So believe what you want, guilty or not, what the future tells or does not: We should — and do — all root for Barry Bonds to break every record in baseball's home run history. It's even more than what we love about the game, it's what we, Americans, love about success.

Just keep livin'.

Matthew McConaughey, actor, Longview, Texas

http://benfry.com/salaryper/

San Francisco's Bonds

By Brian Murphy
Special to Page 2

OK. Take a deep breath. This one is complicated.

I am here to try to explain to a nation of Bonds Haters why the city of San Francisco, this progressive-voting, forward-thinking, hybrid-driving region, a Bay Area that likes to think of itself as sophisticated, intelligent and -- yes, let's say it -- above all other cities in America is unabashedly and unashamedly and embarrassingly still in love with Barry Bonds.

I am here to explain the standing ovations. The "Bar-ry!" chants. The talk show callers who say there's still no proof Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs. That's love.

OK. Deep breath.

As I said, this one is complicated.

As with all complicated issues, it is important to know one's history.

The history here goes back to the summer of 1992, when the San Francisco Giants were terrible. They played in a terrible ballpark, a windswept open-air toilet bowl known as Candlestick Park, where the gale was so fierce and unbearable, you'd swear it was the flatulence of the baseball gods -- except the winds were too cold to believe that.

In this terrible park played a terrible team, a '92 Giants team en route to a 72-90 season that was known for two things:
1. Ninety losses.
2. It would be the last Giants season in San Francisco.

It was a tough time. The Giants might have been terrible, and Candlestick might have been a sewer with seats, but the Giants were our terrible team, and Candlestick was our sewer with seats.

But without a new stadium on the horizon, word was that frustrated owner Bob Lurie had agreed to sell the team to a group of investors in Florida. The Giants, the franchise of McGraw, Mathewson and the Polo Grounds; of Mays, McCovey and San Francisco … would be shipped off to a hermetically sealed dome of death in St. Petersburg, Fla.

It was beyond horrific. One of America's great and bustling cities, San Francisco, was giving a treasured National League franchise to a place where the average resident lived at Del Boca Vista and ate dinner at 4 p.m.

Fast-forward to the happy ending -- Peter Magowan, Larry Baer and other heavy-hitting investors flew to New York, persuaded NL owners to sell to them and keep the Giants in San Francisco, then announced their presence with panache.

They immediately signed free-agent Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Barry Bonds for the princely sum of $42 million over seven years.

Giants fans knew Bonds as the moody brooder who got shouted down by Jim Leyland in spring training, and as the guy who couldn't throw out Sid Bream from second base in the 1992 NLCS. Giants fans also knew him in more profound ways: As the son of Bobby Bonds. As the godson of Willie Mays. As a kid who went to high school in the Bay Area. And, as the 1990 and 1992 NL MVP, the player who just might be the symbol of hope for a new era -- new ownership, new star player, new life.

Barry even said all the right things. He talked about playing in Mays' locker as a kid. He talked about how playing in San Francisco meant everything to him. He talked about Giants tradition, about his dad and about winning a World Series for the city of San Francisco.

Considering the 90-loss season and the specter of the St. Petersburg Giants, Barry Bonds actually represented genuine, black-and-orange hope.

More history: Opening Day, 1993. The Grateful Dead sang the national anthem. (RIP, Jerry.) Bonds made his debut in the home whites. He was listed at 228 pounds, but he looked to be a fit 205, about 6 percent body fat, all quick bat and loud contact. His first at-bat at Candlestick as a Giant? Home run.

Remember, this is years before BALCO. Victor Conte was an unknown, somewhere playing bass guitar alone in his bedroom wearing only his underwear, for all we knew. What we did know: Barry had gone deep for the Giants. Barry said he loved the Giants. Barry came from a Giants lineage. It was all so glowing, we even forgave the fact that he once brought Michael Bolton to an on-field MVP award ceremony at the 'Stick.

See, 1993 figures large in the relationship between Barry and Giants fans. The Giants were magic that year. They won 103 games. They were eliminated on the season's final day by the Atlanta Braves, those thieving bastards who traded for Fred McGriff before the deadline and won their 104th game on their 162nd try.

Barry's 1993 line went like this: 159 games played, 129 runs scored, 46 home runs, 123 RBI, 126 walks, .336 batting average, .458 on-base percentage, .677 slugging percentage.

Again: Conte, playing bass guitar somewhere in his underwear. Bonds, BALCO-free, winning his third MVP award.

From that point on, it was going to be pretty tough to dislodge Barry Bonds from the heart of the Giants fan.

And so it went through the 1990s. Barry would blow off the media, and when he didn't blow off the media, he often would treat them like something on the bottom of his shoe. Giants fans would conveniently overlook these behavioral oddities because not only did Bonds produce like no Giant since Mays but he also earned his big money, not just with numbers but by playing game after game after game. You'd never think to say it -- because he sometimes didn't run out pop-ups, and his body language at times was more A.J. Soprano than Charlie Hustle -- but Barry Bonds was proving himself a gamer.

In 1994, the strike year, he played 112 of 115 games. He hit 37 homers and stole 29 bases.

In 1995, he played 144 games, hit 33 homers and stole 31 bases.

In 1996, he played 158 games, hit 42 homers, drove in 129 and stole 40.

In 1997, he played 159 games, hit 40, drove in 101 and stole 37. He also helped the Giants win their first NL West title in eight years.

In 1998, he played 156 games, hit 37 homers, drove in 122 and stole 28.

You can imagine the political capital Bonds had built up with Giants fans. Here was our generation's Mays. Here was the player we would tell our children to watch hit. Here was a grouchy SOB, yes, but here was the best player in the game.

And that, according to "Game of Shadows," is when it all changed.

In 1998, when Barry hit 37, Mark McGwire hit 70.

It seems obvious now to all but the truest of believers that Barry Bonds then began using performance-enhancing drugs, as evidenced not only by his dramatic physical changes at age 35 but also by his dramatic increase in production at age 35.

By the time Barry hit 73 home runs in 2001, we were all too blindly in love to know better.

Not only had Bonds led the Giants to a 100-win season and another NL West title in 2000, he had done so at the impossibly beautiful new ballpark, Pacific Bell Park, a fable of a yard with McCovey Cove and views of the Bay Bridge and brick walls and garlic fries and our very own, modern-day Babe Ruth. It was the "House that Barry Built," and we were all grateful tenants, happily paying the rent with unconditional love.

Jeff Kent won the MVP award in 2000, but Kent didn't get it the way Barry got it. While Barry kept saying he wanted to win a World Series for Giants fans in San Francisco -- "my hometown," as Barry always pointed out -- Kent was the one who ripped the Giants' new home uniforms on Opening Night at Pac Bell, oozing disdain when he uttered his infamous "french vanilla" description of the Giants' cream-colored home gamers. Worse, he dared describe Pac Bell Park as a place with flaws. He pointed out its shortcomings, how it wasn't a hitter's park, how it was still cold … when all any San Franciscan and any Giants fan wanted to hear was how pretty it was and how lucky we were to have it.

See, I told you, this is complicated stuff. It involves the ego of the native Northern Californians, and a regional pride that likes to be fed with compliments. Northern Californians and San Franciscans are proud in a provincial way, sometimes to our own detriment. Kent never got that, or maybe he did get it and he wanted to be the needle in our pride balloon.

Barry, on the other hand, got it. He fed our egos. He not only didn't rip Pac Bell Park but turned it into the site of his signature blasts. He made his house our home. He essentially invented McCovey Cove, and Splash Hits, for all America's "SportsCenter" watchers to see. You don't think we knew that every time Barry hit one at home, America saw the highlight of the packed house, the quirky right-field wall, the standing-room-only crowd on the arcade wall, the only-in-San Francisco sight of horsehide splashing in Bay? We knew you all saw it, and we hoped you all thought: "Wow, that is a special scene. America's most beautiful city, celebrating baseball's best player, in a style perfect for that magical confluence of latitude and longitude."

By the time the 2002 Giants won the National League pennant for only the third time in San Francisco history, and by the time they came within six outs of the first franchise World Series since the New York Giants won the 1954 Series, Barry wasn't just the best we had ever seen. He was Paul Bunyan. He hit a home run in his first Series at-bat, stirring memories of 1993 and the Grateful Dead and the nearly done St. Petersburg Giants. He hit a home run off Troy Percival that so moved Tim Salmon that Fox's national TV cameras caught him mouthing the words: "That's the longest home run I've ever seen."

Barry was our superstar. He was untouchable. He was the greatest hitter since Ruth, and he was a Giant, in San Francisco, in his "hometown," as he liked to remind us.

We liked to hear it, too.

*

And now, here we are, 2 1/2 years removed from his grand jury testimony, when he reportedly said he thought it was flaxseed oil, and all the other silly half-truths and evasive answers that look so sad and silly next to the Everestian pile of evidence compiled by federal investigators and told to the public by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams.

So, what are we supposed to do now? We proud San Franciscans, we sophisticated thinkers who so easily let our sense be blinded by our desire to bask in our very local kid's glow.

OK. Deep breath. It really is complicated.

Yes, if the allegations prove true, he cheated -- not just by using federally banned drugs but by knowingly altering the game's landscape with drugs that changed the game like no other. He assaulted a sacred record book that had knowable points of reference and tainted it with the unknowable.

And here's the complicated part, the part where rationalization meets logic and puts it in a pretzel hold: Hundreds cheated. Pitchers he hit homers off cheated. If you judge a player by his era, if you judge Ruth by the pre-integration era, you can judge Bonds by the Juiced Era, right? He's still the best of them all, right? Caminiti, Canseco, McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, Giambi -- they're all suspect, aren't they? So are so many others. Besides, don't you remember 1993? That first at-bat? How natural he was? How natural his talent has always been? How pure it has always been? Don't you?

Now, if anything, San Franciscans and Giant fans have been pushed into a corner. Now, the 2006 season has produced the sight of our man Bonds going to San Diego and having a syringe tossed at him; going to L.A. and being vilified like Saddam Hussein; going to Philly and being mocked and taunted and baited. Not just fans, either. He goes to Houston and is treated like a dart board by a journeyman reliever named Russ Springer, who takes five pitches to finally drill Bonds and gets a standing ovation from bloodthirsty Astros fans, groupthink at its worst.

Here is where it gets personal. Here is where the emotion kicks in. Here is where even Giants fans who were disillusioned by the evidence against Bonds begin to feel a sense of clan and rise up. It's as old as family itself.

WE can think what we want about Bonds. WE can be disappointed by his guilt. YOU, on the other hand, don't understand the history, the journey, the ride we've been on. YOU don't remember the 90 losses in 1992, the potential St. Petersburg Giants. YOU weren't there that day when Pacific Bell Park opened, and the Giants had the prettiest park in the land, the House that Barry Built. It's family. WE can talk about our family, judge our family. YOU, on the other hand, are an outsider. You are not family. You are not to judge.

That's how it goes in our minds. The history is too deep to simplify this. The passion is too real to stuff this in the "He Cheated, So Screw Him" file. Like most relationships in sports between athlete and fan, the relationship between San Franciscans and Barry Bonds is built mostly on fable and willful suspension of disbelief. But somewhere in the fable and the willful suspension is something real, and it's something worth defending. As in most families, it's made partly of secrets, partly of lies. It's family. It's baseball. It's hard, is what it is.

Like I said, it's complicated.

Ugh, there goes his whole argument :)

Murphy is stating the obvious, but he does it very well. You can be the biggest asshole in the world but in the end people will always cheer for winners. If you put in a superstar performance on the field then it doesn't really matter what you do off the field, at least not to the home fans.

The Arizona Diamondbacks made a solid baseball decision Tuesday when they kicked Russ Ortiz to the curb -- but contrary to what you'll read about this almost anywhere you look, they won't be "eating" $22 million of his salary (which appears to be a new record for the highest dollar amount owed to a player who's been let go). They won't be eating one cent, because the money was already gone. The Diamondbacks ate that money the moment the ink dried on Ortiz's laughingstock of a contract.

Here's a snapshot of the Diamondbacks' committed payroll expenses for 2007, as of Tuesday morning:

Shawn Green -- $11.7 million
Russ Ortiz -- $7.5 million
Brandon Webb -- $4.5 million
Tony Clark -- $1.0 million

And here's how it looks Wednesday:

Shawn Green --$11.7 million
Russ Ortiz -- $7.5 million
Brandon Webb -- $4.5 million
Tony Clark -- $1.0 million

From a financial standpoint, nothing has changed. The D-Backs were going to pay Ortiz his money whether he was on the club or not. The economic term for this is a "sunk" cost: Whether you use the player/item/service or not, you've committed already to the expense.

The decision of whether or not to use the player or product or service is independent of the money committed, because it's already spent. You often see the misunderstanding of sunk costs from people who sign a multi-year contract to use a fitness club, then drag themselves to the gym because they're spending the money anyway -- when the truth is that the money is gone even if they never set foot on a treadmill. The go/no-go decision should have nothing to do with the expense.

Arizona's Ortiz decision is just another go/no-go choice: Since the money was wasted already, was the team better off with Ortiz on the roster or not? Clearly, at this point, the Snakes were far better off without Ortiz. He is no better than replacement level when he makes it on to the field -- which isn't often -- and had drifted further into flyball-pitcher territory even as he moved into the most homer-friendly park of his career in Arizona. Dustin Nippert might not be fully ready for the big leagues, but he's going to do more to keep Arizona in contention than Ortiz is.

(As an aside, Ortiz earned a lot of wins during his peak years -- 99 wins during 1999-2004 -- despite not pitching all that well. Often he has been labeled as a pitcher who "knows how to win." Given that he stopped winning last year, his first season pitching for a lousy team, are we just to assume that he forgot?)

Ortiz's contract was a bad idea from its conception. Original errors often are compounded when teams are unwilling to acknowledge their initial mistakes by releasing the players in question. Roughly one-third of all major-league teams have players for the sole reason that they make "too much" money to be released. And that is just plain stupid; there is no greater fool's errand in baseball than waiting for a player who was never that good in the first place to suddenly earn his pay. Unless you can foist the bad contract onto someone else in a trade, which happens very rarely, you're better off releasing the player as soon as a better alternative arrives.

Recognizing the difference between "eating" a contract and releasing a player whose salary is sunk already is a critical skill for any GM. It should be a question on the GMAT (General Manager Aptitude Test), right after the question about when employing Tony Womack would be a good idea. (The correct answer is D, "Never.")

So no, the Diamondbacks aren't going to "eat" Ortiz's contract with this procedural move. You could argue now that they're swallowing it, or merely trying to pass it like a kidney stone. Trust me -- it'll feel better once it's gone.

they did give almost 500 PAs to a .215 EqA catcher with defense that's more rep than runs. That hurt. The 600 PAs for a no-range 2B with a .306 OBP was a problem as well. Preston Wilson was a waste of time.

So in general, the playing of veteran stiffs.