So Gary Sheffield is upset at the Mets for placing him on waivers and then pulling him back when a team claimed him, and now Sheffield is apparently demanding that the Mets either sign him to an extension, or grant him his outright release.

Sheffield has pulled these kinds of stunts often enough in the past with other teams, that it’s tempting to blame Sheffield for being a dick and to tell him to just shut up and play.

But this time, for once, Gary Sheffield is right.

Because on what planet in the universe does it make sense for Omar Minaya and the Mets to pull Sheffield back from waivers? By pulling a player back from waivers, the team is no longer allowed to trade him for the rest of the season, so the Mets missed out on a chance to trade Sheffield for a prospect.

This makes no sense at all, given that the Mets are way, way out of it this year, and also have apparently told Sheffield that he is not in their plans for next year either. If that is true, then why in the world would Minaya hang on to Sheffield and prevent him from playing for a contender when you could have at least gotten something for him?

The only thing I can sort of vaguely see as being a reason is if the claiming team were somebody like the Phillies or the Braves, who are rivals with the Mets and in the same division. But even so, the Mets are waaaay out of it this year, so cares? Take a prospect and let the Phillies or Braves have him.

There is a possibility that we may not have all the information here, but based on everything we know, Sheffield has a right to be pissed. Sheffield is already 40 and it’s not like he’s going to have too many other chances to play for a contender after this season.

Even his demand for an extension from the Mets makes sense, because the only valid reason not to let Sheff go would be if the Mets really, really want him for next year, and want to have the exclusive negotiating rights window.

Clearly Sheffield is wanted by at least one other team, so the Mets are just being petty and stupid by keeping him on a team going nowhere when they could have gotten at least something for him.

Here’s a move I never saw coming, if only because he is sitting on 499 homers and has a guaranteed $14 million contract this year, but the Tigers went ahead and released Gary Sheffield.

On one hand this is so strange, because teams never ever release guys on the eve of these kinds of milestones, do they?  Especially when they are going to have to cough up all that money either way, right?  But maybe it just speaks to how much some of these milestones have been tarnished by the steroid era. Even pitching ones, maybe, now that we have Roger Clemens. After all, the Diamondbacks just let Randy Johnson walk despite his desire to return and his being still good and only five wins away from 300.

I’m actually going to say that I think this deal is good for both the Tigers and Sheffield. Kudos to Detroit for recognizing that as a team with a legitimate shot at contention this year, they need to put the best team on the field from day one, regardless of milestones and any other sentimental garbage, and that that team no longer includes a 40-year old Sheffield who hit .247 in his two seasons with the Tigers and has been wracked by injuries.

At the same time, this is a great chance for Sheffield to hook on with a team that might actually give him some playing time. The Tigers’ trade for outfielder Josh Anderson this week really left Sheffield nowhere to go except riding the pine and occasionally DHing.

Although Sheffield has aged rapidly in the past two years, he still has some batspeed left when healthy, and at the major league minimum he represents a good gamble for some team in need of a right-handed stick.

In this week’s Metro column, I boldly made the following claim:

[Manny] Ramirez is arguably the best active player to have never received an MVP award. He’s certainly the best active player to be so consistently snubbed; of similar players, he has the fewest top-five finishes without ever finishing in the top two.

But of course, Manny is far from the only great active player to never take home the trophy, and while I was cogitating about this column, I got to talking about these players with my co-conspirators here at UmpBump. We bandied about some other names of active players who have, amazingly enough, never won an MVP: Gary Sheffield and Jim Thome lead the pack, in my mind, and you could make a case for perennially beloved also-rans Derek Jeter and David Ortiz as well.

Sure, there are fantastic younger guys who haven’t won the trophy yet. But when it comes to the David Wrights, Chase Utleys, and Hanley Ramirezes of baseball, one can say, “Hey, he’s still young.” And there are deserving players who are always a long shot to take home the hardware simply by virtue of their position; most pitchers and designated hitters suffer this fate. (I’ve included Ortiz here on my list of snubs because a) yes, I’m a Red Sox fan and this is my list, you jerks and b) he’s finished in the top 5 of the MVP balloting for the past four years running—a neat trick for any player, even more so considering the entrenched bias among many members of the BBWAA against voting for a full-time DH.)

But with the Sheffs and the Mannys and the Thomes, it’s a different story. You can’t necessarily point to a certain year and say, “This is the year he deserved to win,” but you’re still surprised to learn he’s never gotten the trophy.

Of active players, who do you think is the biggest MVP snub? Anyone going to take a stand for Todd Helton? Or Mike Piazza, still technically active? Any secret Carlos Delgado fans out there?

Who gets your vote?

more at twiigs.com…

It wouldn’t be Spring Training without a few crazy quotes. But the past couple of days have really set a high bar for nuttiness.

First, there’s Manny Being Manny, patting himself on the back for showing up on time to camp for the first time in a while: “I might be late two years in a row, but I’m always on time.” I think he’s just joking. But he said it with a straight face. And with Manny, who knows?

Then there’s Ichiro Being Ichiro: “If the other corner outfielders have too much speed and too much ability and try to do too much, it’s hard for me.” Fortunately, since Ichiro will be flanked by Raul Ibanez and Brad Wilkerson, that shouldn’t be a problem.

But what could be better than Sheff Being Sheff? Yes, Gary Sheffield, always good for a few words, is back and at it again. Discussing his ongoing dispute with his former agent, Scott Boras, he described his experience with the Uber-Agent thus: “Total hell. I shouldn’t have ever introduced myself to him. Period. Bad person.” Sheffield also vowed that no one would be able to stop him from saying more “ugly things” once the case is resolved: “No fine is going to be big enough. No suspension is going to be long enough.” No one puts Sheffy in the corner!

For those of you who missed it (where the hell were you?), last week, we here at UmpBump nominated 27 deserving men to be the first ever recipients of The Douchies, an award that finally recognizes the douchiness of certain individuals employed by Major League Baseball. Close to 500 of you cast a total of 1746 votes in our four categories and I have to say, some of the results were surprising.

So here they are! Your winners of the 1st Annual Douchie Awards!

The Reggie Jackson Award for Best Display of Attention Grabbing is named after a man who has attained mythical stature as an attention-whore during his playing career. He was the forebearer to the modern, preening baseball player, putting the size of the contract ahead of most anything else. This award will be presented to the person who best personified Mr. Jackson’s penchant to run after the spotlight no matter what cost.

And the winner is…

Read the rest of this entry »

With all the fun news coming out over the past couple of days, I’ve decided to channel my inner Buster Olney and post some links. In an incredibly haphazard manner.

· Have we really reached a point in our discussions concerning Barry Bonds where columnists can create a completely fictional scenario based upon the imagination of the writer of a Wesley Snipes movie and call it an article? If so, we all should just go home. NEXT UP: If aliens invade San Francisco on the Fourth of July, would Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum save Barry Bonds?

· “When you start with the threats and the guns, that can get out of control” – Gary Sheffield

· Who is less likable – A.J. Pierzynski or this guy?

· I wasn’t surprised to hear that Jonny Gomes was demoted to AAA. Nor was I surprised to hear he threw a fit and reportedly “punctuated his argument by throwing the fan mail that was stacked in his box”. I WAS surprised to hear that Jonny Gomes had fans.

· Little known fact: The Washington Nationals have won 12 of their last 17 games, which does me no favors in my quest to make a convincing argument that the National League isn’t that bad. Especially considering that 2 of those 5 losses came against the Orioles.

· I know this is a little late, but I am currently awaiting word as to whether or not Murray Chass and Nate Silver will go toe-to-toe in a “Buried Alive” wrestling match. My money’s on Chass – how do you kill the undead?

I’m a big believer in the utility of batting average on balls put in play, or BA/BIP, as a means of determining which players are likely to improve or decline over the rest of the season. The theory is that pitchers can only consistently control four things – home runs allowed, walks allowed, strikeouts recorded, and ground ball to flyball ratio. These four statistics show a strong correlation from year to year.

While pitchers can control the number of balls that are put into play (by striking out a lot of guys, or not), what pitchers cannot control is the batting average they allow on balls that are put into play. Similarly, hitters can only control how often they put the ball into play (by not striking out), as well as how many homers, walks, and flyballs vs. groundballs they hit, but not the batting average on those balls they put into play.

This makes sense intuitively, as we often suggest that it was not a pitcher’s fault if ground balls happen to find holes or little flares happen to drop in, just as we sympathize with a hitter who hits laser beams but they just happen to be hit right at a fielder.

Thus using BA/BIP, we can quickly decide which players have been extraordinarily lucky or unlucky with balls falling in or happening to be hit straight at someone. This was how we could tell last year that even though Andre Ethier was leading all major leaguers with a .393 batting average last July, he was not exactly the second coming of Ted Williams, because his batting average on balls put into play was the second best in baseball at the time, which suggested that he was getting extraordinarily luckly with balls dropping in for hits.

Conversely, if a player is doing extremely well or extremely poorly but his BA/BIP is not extra ordinarily high or low, we can assume that he is actually just that good or just that bad.

Looking at some of this year’s performances so far, we can see that Daisuke Matsuzaka has been extremely unlucky. Not only did he come into last night’s game with his team putting up a league low 1.2 runs of support behind him, but he also is in the bottom 10 pitchers in the batting average on balls put in play against him, yielding a .333 average any time an opponent doesn’t strikeout or hit a home run (.290 is about average). It is fortunate that Daisuke gets as many strikeouts as he does or his bad luck so far would have translated into an extremely high ERA.

Similarly, looking at batters, we can see that Gary Sheffield (currently batting .119) is very likely to improve in the near future as he has a second-worst in-the-AL .140 batting average on balls put into play, whereas BJ Upton (.340 avg)  has been extremely lucky, with a staggering, major-league-leading BA/BIP of .536, which means his performance is very likely to decline in the near future.

There is an interesting piece in Slate today (it ran in the Washington Post over the weekend) on the differences between HGH and steroids, and whether or not we should bother worrying about HGH at all.

The author, Daniel Engber, says that using HGH isn’t a very big deal, mostly because HGH hasn’t been proven to enhance performance. From Slate:

At the very least, treatment with HGH does seem to reduce body fat and increase muscle mass. Growth hormone may not lengthen your lifespan, but it can certainly improve your looks. (While HGH isn’t as bad for you as anabolic steroids, it does have some minor side effects.

That doesn’t mean very much for athletes: A chiseled physique won’t help you hit a baseball or throw a punch. So far, no one has been able to connect the increase in lean body tissue caused by HGH with enhancement of athletic performance. Unlike steroids, growth hormone hasn’t been shown to increase weight-lifting ability; in the lab, it has a greater effect on muscle definition than muscle strength. And it doesn’t seem to help much with cardiovascular fitness, either.

So why, if HGH doesn’t make you a better player, do guys risk their paychecks and reputations using it? Engber says, like not stepping on the baseline and not talking to a pitcher during a no-hitter, it boils down to superstition:

The most likely reason that athletes use HGH, though, is superstition. A ballplayer might shoot up with HGH for the same reason we take vitamin C when we have a cold: There’s no good reason to think it does anything, but we’re willing to give it a try. The fact that the major sports leagues have banned growth hormone only encourages the idea that the drug has tangible benefits. Why would they ban something unless it worked?

I don’t know if I agree with Engber’s suggestion that superstition leads players to use HGH. But I do think that players are eager to try anything that will make them faster, stronger and healthier. And I don’t think they spend a lot of time sitting around reading labels or scientific journals.

Exhibit A. J.D. Drew’s explanation for why he spends an hour before game in an oxygen chamber:

To be quite honest with you, I just know it works. I don’t know quite how it works, but it works.

Exhibit B. Gary Sheffield’s reasoning for why the cream he got from BALCO couldn’t possibly have been tainted with steroids:

I know they weren’t tainted. Tell me how rubbing something on me will make you feel any different? That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard.

Long story short, just because using HGH doesn’t seem like a smart move, doesn’t mean that there aren’t a ton of guys doing it. The question is, should we care?