Tag MLB

Manny Shouldn’t Be Allowed A Rehab Stint

Danny Vinik Leave a comment

manny rehabManny Ramirez is in the midst of a 50-game suspension for violating the league’s drug policy. He can return to the Dodgers on July 3rd when his suspension is done. In the meantime, Manny has been working out and keeping in shape for his return. However, he is now planning on going to Los Angeles’s Triple-A club Albuquerque to play some ball there before returning to the Dodgers’ lineup. How is this fair??

Ramirez is suspended from Major League Baseball. but he can go play in the minors? This makes no sense to me. Manny is suspended from the majors. He shouldn’t be allowed to play. Period. There isn’t any wiggle room there yet mysteriously, he can go play at Triple-A all he wants. That’s not a suspension from baseball. It’s a suspension from MLB. Why didn’t he just spend the whole 50 games down there, playing regular baseball and keeping himself in peak condition? He could have broken every Triple-A record, come back to Dodgers fresh, and have missed nothing. He’d be completely in rhythm.

This rule needs to be fixed immediately. A suspended player is suspended from professional baseball. He can’t go rehab and get himself ready to play. It doesn’t work like that. Manny should have had to work his way back AFTER the suspension ended. It’s common sense yet MLB managed to screw it up. Well done, Bud Selig. Continue reading “Manny Shouldn’t Be Allowed A Rehab Stint” →

Designing A New Baseball Stadium

Danny Vinik 2 Comments

With the recent opening of Citi Field and New Yankee Stadium, I began thinking about what is necessary to build a great baseball stadium. I’m not talking about big concourses or large aisles. I’m talking about what will give my team the ultimate home field advantage. Baseball is amazing in that the field you play on is different from every other field in baseball. There are no standard regulations like every other sport. No football, hockey, or basketball team can make their field, rink, or court a different shape or size. Baseball teams have the freedom to do that and yet many decide not to do so. Let’s take a look at the best ways to design a stadium for the greatest home field advantage.

  1. The Field Shape. Make one field very short so that you can stack your team with hitters for that field and have a lineup that will put up huge numbers at home. Fenway Park in Boston has the Green Monster just 310 feet from home plate and they stack their lineup with right-handed hitters. Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia, Mike Lowell,  Jason Bay, and Jason Varitek (Switch) all rack up doubles by hitting balls off the wall that would be caught in others. Yankee Stadium and the New Yankee Stadium both have the short porch in left field. The Yankees stack their lineup with lefties such as Johnny Damon, Robinson Cano, Hideki Matsui, Mark Teixeira (Switch), and Jorge Posada (Switch). The Yankees and Red Sox offenses are built upon their home ballparks, because they play 82 games at home. Building a symmetrical park eliminates the opportunity to build a lineup designed for your home park. Continue reading “Designing A New Baseball Stadium” →

Joe Torre’s Flaw: Bullpen Management

Danny Vinik 3 Comments

I was recently reading The Yankee Years by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci and I came across this quote:

I was trying to do whatever I could to stay away from Mariano to have him for two innings the next day. Chamberlain got through the seventh with the low pitch count. Now my choice is to go with someone else in the eighth, but if I don’t get a clean inning, then I’ve got to get Mariano up, which was the one thing I was trying to avoid. I guess I never really had enough trust in everybody else down there to think that getting three outs in that spot is so simple

Before dissecting that quotation, let me give some background for you. This was game 3 of the 2007 ALDS where the Yankees were down 2-0 in games to the Cleveland Indians. Entering the 8th inning, New York lead 8-3 and had already used their set-up man Joba Chamberlain in the 7th, throwing 16 pitches. Torre made a critical mistake here by sending Joba back out to the mound to pitch the eighth. Up 5 runs, there was no reason to where Chamberlain’s arm out in a game that was close to out of reach. This wasn’t a two or three run game. It was a five-run game. Using Chamberlain for an inning is fine (especially, considering it was 5-3 at the time), but using him in the eighth was a big mistake. Eventually, Chamberlain faltered in game 4 and the Yanks lost the series. This can all be traced back to Torre’s unwillingness to use the rest of his bullpen. This was not something new in 2007 though. Thinking about Torre’s managerial style, I realized that he has faith in only a couple guys in his bullpen each year. The last sentence in that quote says everything. “I never really had enough trust in everybody else down there”. That’s a big problem over the course of a season and I decided to take a look into Torre’s problem managing his bullpen. Continue reading “Joe Torre’s Flaw: Bullpen Management” →