Moneyball Roots on 35th Street

 Yesterday, the White Sox swept the A’s in Oakland for the first time since 1997, or as I told my 23-year old daughter, “when you were six.”  Whatever they’re calling the Oakland Coliseum these days (it now has a dot in its name), the place has been a house of horrors for the Sox.

Last year, the A’s were buyers at the July 31 trade deadline, acquiring pitchers Jon Lester and Jeff Samardzija.  Then, after losing the gimmicky wildcard playoff game to the Royals, they went into classic Billy Beane mode, as the Oakland GM traded away four regulars and Samardzija for prospects.  The results?  The A’s are an embarrassing 13-26, worst in baseball.  (But, yes, I’d still like to get back Josh Phegley and Marcus Semien, even if he does now have 13 errors at short.)

Beane’s Moneyball strategy of drafting smart and trading players away before they become free agents has never won him a pennant, let alone a World Series.  More than anything, it reminds me of Bill Veeck’s “rent a player” scheme from the 1970s.  Faced with the impending loss of Rich Gossage and Terry Forster to free agency, Veeck traded them to the Pirates for outfielder Richie Zisk, who had a career year for the Sox in 1977 with 30 home runs and 101 rbi’s, only Zisk also took the free agent’s walk.  For added measure, Veeck traded shortstop Bucky Dent (all together now, Red Sox fans, rhymes with…) to the Yankees for outfielder Oscar Gamble, who bettered Zisk by one homer and followed him out the door at the end of the ’77 season.  The next year, Veeck shipped Brian Downing off to the Angels in exchange for Bobby Bonds.  This time there were no home runs—OK, 2—to delight the man who invented the exploding scoreboard.  Veeck got rid of Bonds before the season was even halfway over.

The moral of the story is you can trade like Bill Veeck or trade like Billy Beane, but trades alone won’t buy you championships or just drafting the right players.  As the song says, no money no funnee.  In this day and age, shoestrings are for shoes, not baseball team budgets.   

Best-laid Plans

The best-laid plans of mice and general managers (to say nothing of blogging fans) can run amiss.  White Sox Gm Rick Hahn thought—I thought—rookie second baseman Micah Johnson would energize the Sox lineup with his speed.  Instead, Johnson stole three bases while being thrown out twice.  Johnson also was expected to play an adequate second base, but he leaves with a .969 fielding average along with questions about his hands (hard) and range (not much).  If Johnson wants to make it back to the majors, he is going to have to dispel all doubts, which means burning up AAA.  Seriously, good luck, Micah.

Johnson’s replacement is Carolos Sanchez, someone who has been tearing up minor-league pitching at a .344 clip.  My preference would have been Marcus Semien, who was shipped off to Oakland in the Jeff Samardzija deal.  From an offensive perspective, Semien has been a steal with a .309 average and six homeruns.  Defensively, he’s a walking sieve with 11 errors and a .923 fielding average.

Last night, Sanchez and Semien each had a hit while ex-Sox catcher Josh Phegley homered in a 7-6 Sox win as Oakland’s Stephen Vogt was thrown out at the plate for the game’s final out.  Micah Johnson went hitless for Charlotte.

Adieu, Thibodeau?

The Bulls were eliminated 94-73 by the Cavs in game six of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, and the score wasn’t as close as the numbers suggest.  After five years at the helm, Coach Tom Thibodeau appears on his way out.

Thibodeau and Derrick Rose with two good knees might have worked, or Thibodeau without Rose at all; the two Rose-less Bulls’ teams both overachieved into the playoffs.  But this team, with a reduced Rose, laid an egg.  Cavs’ forward Kevin Love was out for the series, LeBron James was ice cold and guard Kyrie Irving—the next Rose—played all of twelve minutes, yet the Bulls still lost by 21.  Thibodeau stakes his reputation on intense practices, but to what end?  The Bulls can’t get around a screen, and they can’t set one, either.  Ditto defending against and hitting three-pointers.  As for Rose, he looked lost, and more than willing to let any of his teammates charge to the basket.  And why does Joakim Noah try to bring the ball upcourt like he’s a guard?

The Bulls have had two exceptional head coaches, Dick Motta in the ‘70s and Phil Jackson in the ‘90s.  Motta brought passion and smarts to the job (only to be done in by his paranoia); Jackson added a keen sense of irony, unheard of in professional sports.  If taskmaster Thibodeau has passion, he hides it in a Rose-like monotone, which is not the best way to project leadership.

This is a franchise in trouble, more old than young, and said to be interested in a rookie replacement for Thibodeau.  Fred Hoiberg would be advised to think long and hard before leaving the college ranks for a team in search of a madhouse, to say nothing of a personality.

The Goose that lays the Golden Pigskin

 The NFL is pure gold.  The league goes through the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson scandals last season along with allegations (which broke just before the Super Bowl) that the Patriots cheated by using underinflated balls in the AFC championship game against the Colts.   People reacted to all this by making Super Bowl XLIX the most watched program in American TV history.

Two weeks after a draft extravaganza that brought some 200,000 fans to downtown Chicago comes the NFL report on “Deflategate”:  Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady probably knew about the soft balls.  That likelihood will net Brady a four-game suspension at the start of the season (vs. two games initially for Rice knocking his fiancée out cold in an elevator).  Anti-Patriots’ fans are ecstatic (except for some who think New England should have been stripped of its title a la the Jackie Robinson West Little League team) while Patriots’ fans are livid.  I doubt any of this will affect pro football’s popularity. 

What’s the old saying, panem et circenses?  We do seem to love our bread and circuses (and beer).  That would make Roger Goodell the new Caesar, in power for as long as he can satisfy his praetorian guard of team owners.  I guess history really does repeat itself.     

Stuck in Lodi, aka Valpo

 There’s a Credence Clearwater Revival song with a chorus that goes, “Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again.”  My daughter can relate.

She’s back at Valpo, trying to fashion a summer around softball that, with luck, will include honest-to-goodness D-I recruiting responsibilities.  Too bad Clare’s apartment complex has lousy cable.  No White Sox or Cubs, a blackout last night on MLB Network and no channel that shows a schedule of programs.  Is there anything on TV? someone texted her mother.    

“Tell her Chicago Fire is on at nine,” I kind of joked.  My father was a veteran of 35 years with the Chicago Fire Department, only he ne3ver ate as much smoke in a year as the characters do in half an episode.  But I like guessing where they film the exterior scenes.

And this is what our specific-sports-wired child texted back: I hate soccer.  Oops, wrong Fire. 

Big Hurt, Restauranteur

Big Hurt, Restauranteur       

We celebrated Mother’s Day a little early on Friday when Clare came in from Valpo for the weekend.  Our restaurant of choice was the Big Hurt Brewhouse here in Berwyn.  The food is still good while the service has gotten better.  That matters to me more than the possible presence of a ballplayer or two at the bar.  Clare, of course, wants to bump into Jermaine Dye one day.

Eleven years ago this summer we took an odd little vacation with St. Louis at one end and Galena Illinois at the other; Clare was twelve.  In St. Louis we visited the Gateway Arch and the Hill, the neighborhood where Yogi Berra grew up.  I wanted to eat at Stan Musial’s restaurant, but it had closed by that time, and Mike Shannon’s didn’t have the same cache, at least for me.  In Galena, we crossed over the Mississippi to drive out to the Field of Dreams, where Clare put on a hitting clinic for the corn and the ghosts.  Food isn’t everything.     

Jordan vs. Rose

If the Bulls manage to win an NBA championship this year, that would give Derrick Rose one to six for Michael Jordan.  Comparisons aren’t really fair here.

Jordan was the only guard/forward/center in the history of basketball.  He may not have played all three positions at once, but he played each of them during the course of nearly every game.  The only equivalent I can think of would be Babe Ruth, pitching and hitting his way into the Hall of Fame, but you would need to add another 150 wins to Ruth’s career total of 94.  By contrast, Rose is a very good offensive player whose lost a half of step of lightning after three knee surgeries.  But even at the top of his game, it’s no contest.  Jordan was the better player by far.  Sorry, Derrick (and Babe).

I wonder what Jordan and Rose would have been in other lives.  With Jordan, that drive and on-court leadership would have translated nicely into a military career.  We’re not talking Patton here but more along the lines of Alexander the Great or Napoleon.  That last one would be an interesting matchup, if you could find a way to put the two of them on the same battlefield or add a foot and a half to the Little Corporal.

Rose is harder to figure.  He seems normal to boring off the court, rarely showing emotion in interviews and having no discernible interest in the decadent lifestyle available to pro athletes.  The tattoos may be a disguise for a regular guy who wants nothing more than to step out of the shadow of His Airness just once.