Today is Valentine’s Day, a day for loving the ones you already love, but also for loving the ones you hope to love even more in the near future. So it’s fitting that this year, Valentine’s Day is also the day that pitchers and catchers report, bringing an end to the deadest two weeks in American professional sports, and signaling that spring is finally here.

Because spring training is baseball’s time of love. There is plenty of love to go around for both the veterans you already love, and the young prospects you hope to love very soon. It is a time when every aging veteran has just come back from a new conditioning program and looks better than he has in years. Every rookie seems to have a bit of pop in his bat or a fastball with some good late movement. Everyone seems to have an shot to make the team, and every team seems to have a shot to make big things happen.

What is Spring Training?

Spring Training is Ryan Dempster guaranteeing that the Cubs will win the World Series this year.

It is 2-time AL MVP Juan Gonzalez showing up in the Cardinals camp as a non-roster invitee, two years removed from his last pro season, in which he managed to get only one at-bat.

It is Manny Ramirez embarking on a grueling new workout regimen, promising to be on time to spring training, and boldly declaring that he wants to “be like Julio Franco and play until I’m 48.”

It fans dreaming just how good Clay Buchholz or Joba Chamberlain might be this year.

Spring Training is teams like the White Sox and Astros actually thinking they have any chance of contending. And really, who’s to tell them that they don’t?

Now I know somewhere in the back of my mind that not quite everything is perfect in Baseball Land, and that there was some pretty nasty business going down on Capitol Hill yesterday. And I’ll admit that I myself was riveted to the screen watching it.

But that was before. That was what we clung to for some semblance of entertainment during the dark and dying days of winter.

Today pitchers and catchers have reported, and I am already forgetting. Now there is only the crack of bats, the smack of leather on leather, blue skies, and the smell of fresh green grass. It is officially springtime, baseball is back, and anything seems possible.

Some pretty interesting facts have come to light over the past few days in the reportage and windbaggery surrounding the announcement of the AL and NL Rookies of the Year yesterday…

1. Did we know that Ryan Braun had the highest rookie slugging percentage in the history of baseball? Wow.

2. Troy Tulowitzki saved the Rockies something like 50 runs on defense, no matter which method you use. That is even more amazing, and probably means he’s the best defensive player in the game today. Although I can’t help wondering if Coors Field may be at least slightly skewing those numbers due to more balls in play or something.

3. Did we know Dustin Pedroia played the last 2 months of the season and the playoffs with a broken hand? Gamer!

4. Daisuke Matsuzaka had a higher VORP than Dustin Pedroia. This makes me feel a bit better about me having picked him as AL ROY back in my October 2 post. Still, after watching Pedroia’s amazing performance in the postseason, and now hearing about the broken hand, I realize I should have picked him over Matsuzaka. Giving that I also went knee-jerk with Braun over Tulo without even looking at the defensive stats, this now puts me in the embarrassing situation of having to admit to Sarah that I was wrong and she was right about BOTH Rookie of the Year picks. Ouch.

1. Finally a World Series that I actually want to watch

So it’s Rockies vs. Red Sox. It’s nice to have the first truly compelling World Series matchup in, well, in a long, long time. I mean, does it get any better? It’s the best squad money and human ingenuity can devise, versus God’s own team.

For so many years now, the World Series has seen an seemingly unstoppable AL juggernaut take on some random, mediocre NL team which happened to rise to the top of an inferior league. Oh sure, once in a while the NL team gets a few breaks and manages to win the World Series, but we all understand this to have been just luck, and there is never really much doubt which team was actually the better squad.

Certainly, there have been a few compelling finishes, especially the 2001 matchup between the Yankees and the Diamondbacks when Luis Gonzalez managed to beat superpowered playoff ninja Mariano Rivera with a walkoff, jam-shot, bloop single in the bottom of the ninth inning of game seven. But as Derek Jeter said later, if the Yankees and the D-Backs replayed that inning 100 times, the Yankees would have won 99 of them.

The problem is that the National League has just been so weak for so many years. Even when an NL champ like the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals has won a major-league best 105 games, you knew in the back of your mind that they did it playing against the weakest division in baseball, and that the Red Sox had proven that they were actually the best team in baseball by winning 98 games in the AL East and beating the Yankees.

But now, for the first time in recent, or even not-so-recent, memory, we have a World Series matchup where we are not really sure who has the better chance to win. Sure, on paper the Red Sox seem to have better players, but the Rockies have some serious mojo going with their current streak. I don’t care what anyone says, if you win 21 out of 22 games, and those games were all baseball games, you are one of the best teams ever.

And this most recent streak actually has the effect of blinding us to just how good this team really is. After a lousy 10-16 April, the Rockies had the best record in the National League the rest of the way. They led the national league in virtually all hitting categories. The tallied the highest team fielding percentage in the history of baseball. And maybe most impressive of all, despite pitching half their games at Coors field, they posted the best ERA in the National League since the All-Star break.

Not to mention that the Rockies crushed the Red Sox in a head-to-head showdown at Fenway back in June, outscoring them 20-5 in a three-game series.

But the Red Sox have some mojo of their own, having just come back from a 3-1 deficit in dominating fashion (7-1, 12-2, and 11-2), and en route battering two of the best pitchers in the American League - C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona - to the tune of 23 runs in 16 1/3 innings pitched. Not to mention that the Sox have two of the greatest hitters in the history of playoffs in David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, whether you chose to go by stats or just by watching with your own two eyes.

It’s sure going to be fun watching those two hit in Coors Field. And it’s going to be a blast finding out what miracles God is going to pull out of his sleeve next on behalf of His Chosen Men In Purple.

2. All is well with the Universe: JD Drew and Julio Lugo have remembered that they suck

It was nice to see J.D. Drew and Julio Lugo returning to their normal selves after a cosmos-rattling game in which Drew hit a clutch, two-out grand slam and Lugo had a timely two run double.

This time, Drew came up in an almost identical situation, once again finding himself at bat with the bases loaded in the first inning, and happily, grounded into an inning-ending double play. Likewise, Lugo made an inexcusable error on an easy pop-up, giving the Indians a golden chance to tie up the game in the 7th.

But in any case, these are good omens for Red Sox fans. After a momentary collision with a parallel universe in which Drew and Lugo actually do helpful things in crucial situations, the universe is all back to normal now and the Sox can go back to being the team which compiled the best record in baseball, despite Drew posting a VORP of 15.1 (less than 2 points higher than Jacoby Ellsbury’s 13.6 in more than 400 additional at-bats), and Lugo actually posting a negative VORP of -1.3.

3. By my count, he still had another 162 pitches left

Fans of Daisuke Matsuzaka have to be really encouraged by his performance after a lackluster outing in game 3. Although his final line of 5 innings pitched doesn’t look that great, with the entire Boston pitching staff available to go with the exception of an injured Tim Wakefield, there was no reason to keep him in longer than 5.

If you are Terry Francona and you have the option of effectively shortening the game to those 5 innings by pitching Okajima and Papelbon for the last 4, you’d be crazy not to go to the bullpen early (although I have to say, I was aghast when Francona sent Okajima out to start a third inning after he barely escaped the 7th - there is no universe in which that was a good idea).

Most encouraging about Matsuzaka’s performance was that a guy whose only two real weaknesses this past year were walks and home runs, did not allow a single walk or home run to one of the best offenses in the game with its back to the wall. Not to mention that Matsuzaka did not allow a baserunner for the first 3 innings, and he only made 88 pitches in the five frames he threw.

The word is that Matsuzaka spent pretty much every waking minute since his previous start studying videotape, working on mechanics, and pondering how he could do better if there was a game seven. But then again, in this stereotyped world we live in, could we possibly expect any less than absolute hardcore-ness from an inscrutible Japanese like Matsuzaka? After all, Japanese people never panic, get tired, or die.

But the real point is, Matsuzaka showed that he can and will make adjustments, and that bodes well for continued improvement as he continues a major league career which is only just beginning. Read the rest of this entry »

First, tonight’s Metro GameDay column: a game of millimeters.

Now, the keys to tonight’s game:

For the Red Sox

1. Daisuke Matsuzaka must go big or the Red Sox will go home. He can’t afford to make mistakes—he must locate his fastball, and his breaking stuff must break. It won’t matter if he can’t get out of the 5^th inning again (the Red Sox bullpen now includes starters Lester, Wakefield, and Beckett, as well as a rested Papelbon, Timlin, and Okajima) as long as he can keep the Indians from having a big inning.
2. The Sox offense needs to solve Jake Westbrook. They’ve been on a tear since the late innings of Game 5 in Cleveland, and with the Sox back in the friendly confines of Fenway Park, that momentum has only gathered steam. But they can’t wait until Westbrook leaves the game to score—Rafael Betancourt has just been too good.
3. Terry Francona needs to choose his relievers carefully. Eric Gagne will no doubt stay on the bench after working last night (and after being so dreadful in Game 2). Nonetheless, Manny Delcarmen has been knocked around by the Indians both times he’s appeared in this series, and I would be very surprised (and, let’s be honest, completely infuriated) if Tito tapped him again.

For the Indians

1. Westbrook’s sinker needs to sink as well as it did during Game 3. He needs to keep the Red Sox offense off-balance—and keep them hitting into those double plays. This is no less important for being glaringly obvious.
2. The Indians offense must be patient with Daisuke. Even with his high strikeout rate, he has walked about one batter for every two strikeouts. Plus, opponents’ OBP on full counts is almost .500—in other words, if the Indians can work the count full, they have about a 50-50 chance of reaching base.
3. The Indians need to score first. The Red Sox showed at the Jake on Thursday what can happen to a great home crowd when the enemy team strikes first. If the Indians can do the same thing at Fenway, they might be able to take the crowd out of the equation.

As Sarah pointed out earlier, the CY Young races this year are pretty lame. So I think I’ll spend some time tackling a far more hotly contested topic: was Matsuzaka worth it?

Before we start talking about Matsuzaka, let’s make a few things clear. First, his contract is for six years and $52 million. But the Red Sox paid $51 million for the right to negotiate with Matsuzaka. And you can’t just ignore that posting fee. So for the purposes of this conversation, we’re going to treat Mastsuzaka like a $103 million player — which is what he is, as far as the Sox are concerned.

Also, I know that people will argue that the Red Sox were willing to pay $51 million to negotiate with Matsuzaka, because they knew that signing the phenom would open up all sorts of previously unexplored marketing opportunities in Japan. And that’s a legit argument. But this isn’t a sports business blog and I wouldn’t know how to begin measuring Matsuzaka’s economic impact on the Red Sox. So we’re just going to be talking about Matsuzaka the pitcher, not the brand. We clear? Super.

Now let’s get down to it.

The question of Matsuzaka’s worth is really a two-parter: 1. Did he earn his salary this season? And 2. Was signing Dice-K a good long-term investment?

Let’s start by trying to answer the first part (which is much, much easier). The Red Sox are paying approximately $17 million a season over six years for Matsuzaka. That makes him one of the highest paid pitchers in baseball, in line with guys like Pettitte, Colon, Clemens and Zito.

Does Matsuzaka pitch like one of baseball’s elite pitchers?

He didn’t this season. This year, Matsuzaka was 15-12 with an ERA of 4.40, which was the 43rd best in baseball among pitchers who pitched a minimum of 180 innings. In other words, he was thoroughly mediocre.

Some people will tell you Matsuzaka was unlucky this season. And of course, there’s some truth to that. But by and large, Matsuzaka had it made. He was backed by the league’s second best offense and the league’s best bullpen.

Hey, the numbers don’t lie. Matsuzaka had good run support. His teammates scored 5.72 runs per game that he started. Wakefield got about the same — 5.76. Beckett got more — 6.59.

Compare that to poor Barry Zito, who only got 4.44 runs per game. Or Brandon Webb, who will come in second in the NL Cy Young voting, and only got 4.38.

Then there’s John Lackey, who is getting no respect in the Cy Young voting, despite his 19 wins and league leading 3.01 ERA. He got only 4.86 runs of support on average.

So, it’s kind of a stretch to call Matsuzaka unlucky.

He was just, you know, really average.

Read the rest of this entry »

Compared to last year, ranking the rookies for this season is pretty boring, since as Coley points out, most of the best rookies were in the NL, but even in the NL the choice is obvious given Ryan Braun’s utter dominance.

But I have been a bit surprised at some of the names that keep getting mentioned, as well as some of the names who haven’t been mentioned much.

So I decided to rank the top 15 rookies together in one group, including players from both leagues. Here is what I came up with:

1. Ryan Braun (NL)
2. Troy Tulowitzki (NL)
3. Daisuke Matsuzaka (AL)
4. Hunter Pence (NL)
5. Dustin Pedroia (AL)
6. Jeremy Guthrie (AL)
7. James Loney (NL)
8. Brian Bannister (AL)
9. Chris Young (NL)
10. Kyle Kendrick (NL)
11. Yovanni Gallardo (NL)
12. Peter Moylan (NL)
13. Reggie Willits (AL)
14. Joakim Soria (AL)
15. Hideki Okajima (AL)

Sure enough, 8 out of my top 12 rookies hail from the National League. Although I’m not sure if this necessarily means good things for inter-league balance, since the Red Sox and the Yankees are probably just going to sign away all these guys as soon as they hit free agency.

Also, as you can see, I agree with Coley’s contention that at least based on pure numbers, Troy Tulowitzki was really unlucky to have his rookie year in the same season as Ryan Braun. But in actuality I don’t really feel too bad for him, given that he benefitted greatly from playing half his games in Coors Field, posting a ridiculous .942/.720 home/road OPS split.

Hunter Pence had a heck of the year, hitting for both average and power and stealing bases as well, and even with his injury woes he still managed to play in 108 games and log 456 at-bats. He’s not the Rookie of the Year, but he has a heck of a future ahead of him.

After Braun, Dodgers first-baseman James Loney was actually the second-best rookie in the National League this season, and did get into 96 games, but couldn’t make as much of a contribution to his team as Pence or Tulowitzki since was pointlessly blocked for the first two months owing to Ned Colletti’s foolish decision to resign Nomar Garciaparra despite the fact that Loney led all of baseball in batting average at AAA in 2006.

Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone is even considering Delmon Young, and as you can see, I’ve left him off my list. In fact, he wouldn’t even make my top 20. Delmon Young led all rookies in at-bats with 654, yet only hit 13 home runs, walked a mere 26 times, and posted a woeful .723 OPS. 10 other rookies hit more home runs, most of them in far fewer at-bats. Out of the eight rookies who qualified for a batting title, five had a higher OBP than Young, including teammate Akinori Iwamura. The bottom line is, if you get 654 at-bats and OPS .723 as a corner outfielder, you are in fact severely hurting your team, even if you are a veteran. You are certainly not anywhere close to being the Rookie of the Year!

I’m also not sure why Hideki Okajima gets mentioned so much. Sure he had a great year, but Peter Moylan was by far the best rookie relief pitcher this year (although he was in the NL), and even in his own league Joakim Soria of the Royals put up nearly identical numbers while posting 17 saves to Okajima’s 5.

A guy who certainly deserves more consideration is D-Backs centerfielder Chris Young. He’s not the Rookie of the Year because his batting average and on-base percentage were atrocious, but he did contribute greatly at a defensive skill position while playing every day, and chipped in 32 home runs along with 27 stolen bases.

I’ve saved perhaps my most controversial call until last: I’m going to have to go with Daisuke Matsuzaka over Dustin Pedroia as my 2007 AL Rookie of the Year. First of all, I don’t buy the whole argument that Japanese players shouldn’t be eligible for ROY consideration given all their experience in Japan. Having watched a lot of Japanese baseball, I can say firsthand that it is nowhere near the level of the Majors. That’s why Matsuzaka’s ERA was 4.40 this year and not 2.35. Also, Matsuzaka was only 26, which isn’t really that old. If an American player gets lots of experience in the minors and then has a breakout season at 27 or 28, we don’t say he should be ineligible for the award.

But more importantly, Matsuzaka had a better year than Pedroia. Sure, he wasn’t *quite* as good as some of the more delierious Boston fans might have expected, but was still one of the better pitchers in the American League, posting 15 wins, pitching over 200 innings, and striking out 201 batters. Sure, Pedroia had a great season, but was he even the most valuable rookie on his own team? Put another way, would the Red Sox rather have played through this past season without Daisuke Matsuzaka, or without Dustin Pedroia? I think it’s clear that Matsuzaka made a greater contribution as a rookie in the AL.

- Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that all celebrities should release solo music albums. And if your vocal chords can’t soar like Crockett or even Tubbs, do what Dice-K has done and rely on the guitarist from Extreme and the harmonica player from the J. Geils Band named Magic Dick. (NOTE: I have already gone to the webpage to eagerly purchase the item. What I found there was utter disappointment. The milk and honey were sour indeed.)

- The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Bob Ford and his alter-ego, Hans McNaysayer, stage an epic debate as to whether or not Brett Myers should be a starter. In the end, Hans was slain.

- And I believe we have found the winner of the 2007 “Most Offensive Headline” Award.

- Now we know why the Pirates have been so bad for so long. Why do those “fan” people have to keep coming to the games? I mean, come on.

- I’m sorry, Nationals fans. But your pennant hopes were tied to Christian Guzman’s wrist. And the wrist simply couldn’t bear the burden any longer. In a related story, the Texas man who wanted to be executed while laughing has found exactly the material to get this done – he will simply read the words “Christian Guzman” and “having an All Star season”.

- WARNING: This story may contain a lethal dose of Don Cheadle’s head.

“What’s the matter with Daisuke Matsuzaka?” is how MLB.com’s Ian Brown begins his recap of tonight’s Red Sox game, adding, “That question, as difficult as it is to answer at the moment, is more mysterious than haunting for the Red Sox at the moment.”

I beg to differ. It’s not mysterious at all. Julio Lugo is what is the matter.

As I’ve been trying to explain to people since last summer, when I had the distinctly painful experience of watching Lugo “play” 50 or so games for the Dodgers, Julio Lugo is not a good player. Sure, he put up some gaudy numbers in Tampa Bay, far, far from the klieg lights of actual playoff contention, but you really have to watch Lugo every day to see the little ways he hurts teams with his bad decisions on the basebaths, his ill-advised positioning and hesitant play on defense, and his bafflingly low-quality at-bats in key situations (eg doubles down the line with nobody on and two down, strikes out on three straight swings with and a man on third and no outs).

Tonight, by my count, Lugo single-handedly cost Matsuzaka five of the seven runs he allowed on five terrible plays, only one of which was ruled an error (another was initially called an error but later reversed and called a hit).

In the first, after Matsuzaka walked the bases loaded, Lugo in explicably went for the out at third rather than turning a double play. A few minutes later, Lugo let Kenji Johjima’s easy grounder glance off his glove for his only official error of the night. Finally, Lugo let Yuniesky Bentancourt’s pop-up glance of his glove for what should clearly have been another error, but just because he had to run a bit out into the outfield they later said it was a hit.

So while Matsuzaka was certainly not on his game, he basically had to get 6 outs in the first innning thanks to Lugo.

But Lugo was not done causing harm. After Daisuke settled down and breezed through the next three innings, he ran into a bit of trouble in the fifth, walking Raul Ibanez and giving up a single to Richie Sexon.

Re-enter one Julio Lugo.

Jose Guillen hit another little pop-up behind shortstop. Lugo started after it, then hesitated, then started up again before going into a pathethic little slide as the ball dropped at his feet. They scored it a hit as a run came home.

Daisuke then got Johjima to ground out (to first and not short, thankfully), and then Bentancourt hit a slow, easy grounder straight at Lugo, who took his time, fielded it, and then threw high to first forcing Youkilis to leap up off the bag. Again, this was somehow inexplicably called an “infield single.” Seven “earned” runs for Matsuzaka in five innings, although Lugo actually earned five of them.

This isn’t the first time Lugo helped undo Daisuke. You may remember that Matsuzaka lost his third start of the season in heartbreaking fashion when he was outdueled by Gustavo Chacin 2-1. Much was made of how Matsuzaka got “rattled” in his one bad inning after what looked like a third strike was called a ball and then two runs later came in. But hardly anyone mentioned the potential inning-ending double play ball hit right at Julio Lugo two batters later that Lugo let skip over his glove and into centerfield.

Naturally, it was scored a hit.

After watching Alex Gonzalez run halfway to the wall out in left centerfield to chase down a flyball with a sliding grab last week, you have to wonder what the Red Sox pitchers’ ERAs would be if the Sox had somehow had the vision to pony up a measily $4 million to re-sign the shortstop who should have been the AL gold glover last season.

Last time I checked, Gonzalez was outhitting Lugo this season as well.