Thursday, July 21, 2011

Looking for Help at the Not-So-Hot Corner

To begin the season, third base was already looking particularly thin, especially when you looked past the elite tier: Evan Longoria, David Wright, Ryan Zimmerman and even Alex Rodriguez.  Interestingly enough, the one thing each member of that quartet has in common is that every one of them has sustained a major injury this year—as defined by time lost to the DL.  Longoria was absent from April 3 until May 33, and didn’t hit his first home run until May 7.  David Wright hasn’t played now since May 15, after sustaining a [gulp] broken back (speaking of serious injuries).  Zimmerman, slowly but surely having his career partially defined by his penchant for injuries was out from the second week of April until June 14, and he’s still hitting just .240 with 5 HR (maybe he’s still not completely healthy).  And everyone’s favorite cornerstone, A-Rod, just went on the 15-day DL on July 8 following knee surgery and is expected to miss 4-6 weeks.  All that DL time just added injury to insult, making it nearly impossible for fantasy owners to find a productive bat at the hot corner.

One intriguing option entering the year was Pedro Alvarez of the Pittsburg Pirates.  The Pirates seemed on the verge of finally improving (and improve they certainly have), but it was believed that Alvarez was going to have to have a big offensive season for that to happen.  After hitting 29 home runs between the big leagues and minors in 2010 (16 with Pittsburgh), it seemed like he was ready for a breakout season in 2011.  Not counting Jose Bautista (who was ranked as an outfielder), Alvarez seemed as capable of anyone (Mark Reynolds included) to hit 40 bombs while playing third.  He hasn’t lived up to his potential.  In 36 disappointing big league games this season, Alvarez hit just .208 with two (TWO?!?!?!) home runs.  His OBP still sits at a miserable .283, and it took a May 18 home run to finally push his SLG over .300.  That translates to a .587 OPS—a clear indication that something (some things, plural) was amiss.  In fact, Alvarez has been so bad this year that the Pirates had no recourse but to send him back to AAA following an injury off his own (really, every 3B in baseball has been hurt).  That’s where he currently resides, hoping to earn another shot with the perplexingly pugnacious Pirates.

The silver lining, if there is one, is that Alvarez is finally hitting in Indianapolis.  In 13 AAA games, Alvarez is hitting .370 with a .444 OBP and .543 SLG—numbers that suggest he’s finally healthy. Granted, it’s just 138 plate appearances, but his 2 home runs, 12 runs, and 10 RBIs are all positive signs.  A little more seasoning and he’s almost certain to return to the big club.  It’s not like Brandon Wood (talk about failed prospects) and his .209 batting average or .619 OPS present insurmountable obstacles for Alvarez to return.  Interestingly enough, a power bat seems to be the one missing ingredient for Pittsburgh to continue their surprising playoff push.  They’ve been linked in trade rumors to a few names, including Josh Willingham and Carlos Pena.  However, Alvarez might be able to offer a boost with zero cost to the team.  The potential cost to fantasy owners would be almost as minimal.  It’s not like he not widely available on the waiver wire, and considering the dearth of healthy, productive third basemen, he might not be a terrible speculative add.

Monday, July 18, 2011

The Superman of Walks

Look…up in the sky.  It’s a bird.  It’s a plane.  It’s another base on balls.  This must mark the impending return of the enigmatic Jonathan Sanchez to the Giants rotation.  Sanchez has been on the 15-day DL since June 25 with left biceps tendinitis [cough] general suckiness [cough], and clearly the team has missed his 3.81 ERA and 1.42 WHIP.  Seriously, replacing that 5.92 BB/9 must have been a daunting task indeed.  Hell, there isn’t a qualified starter with a worse BB/9 than Sanchez.  The saving grace is that Sanchez hasn’t pitched enough innings to qualify for that dubious title, although he does still lead the NL in total walks despite pitching just 89.2 innings.  Way…to…go. [quiet applause]
Could it be that Sanchez’ return has at least a little something to do with Barry Zito having a very Barry Zito-esque start—surrendering 8 ER in just 3.2 IP on July 16?  Interestingly enough, Zito had been pitching fairly well leading up to that game, lowering his 2011 ERA to 3.18 in the process.  It really seemed like the former Cy Young Award winner might be poised for yet another strong start too.  After all, the chips were stacked in his favor: a terrible Padres lineup, at PETCO Park, a few extra days rest to heal anything that might be ailing him.  Talk about a recipe for success.  The missing ingredient?  When Barry Zito is the chef, well, anything is possible.  The end result was nothing less than a crap sandwich.  And, everyone knows what a crap sandwich tastes like even topped with capicola.
The end result is that the Giants are now (re)turning to chaos incarnate, Jonathan Sanchez in the hopes that 8 BB games are less damaging to a team’s success than 8 ER games.  While that seems like a logical tradeoff, in the end there’s really no guarantee that the two stat-lines are mutually exclusive.  The funny thing is the team might be correct in their thinking on this one.  Despite his inability to pitch more than six innings (something Sanchez has done only three times in 2011), and his inability to limit free passes, Sanchez seldom surrenders a lot of earned runs.  In fact, Sanchez has given up more than 3 ER only twice all season, hence the “respectable” ERA.  In the end, it’s seldom going to be pretty (often quite ugly), but Sanchez normally gives that Giants at least a fighting chance when it comes to winning ballgames.

The Slow and Steady Death of Grady Sizemore

Monday, July 18: The day Grady Sizemore’s career ended.  No, he didn’t die in a fire or get mauled by a bear (although that would be quite the news story).  Sizemore reinjured his surgically repaired knee sliding into second base during a July 17 game against the Baltimore Orioles.  This is the same knee he had surgically “repaired” in 2010 (good ole microfracture), an injury that has made the once vaunted outfielder to look like a shadow of his former self. 

It’s not like there’s a laundry list of baseball players that have successfully returned from microfracture surgery.  It’s a procedure just recently came into being in the 1980s and really didn’t gain a footing in the sports science until that later part of the 1990s.  The sports world is more familiar with the procedure in a basketball context, including such notable patients as Amar’e Stoudemire, Jason Kidd, Tracy McGrady, and Greg Oden.  That short list includes some successes and tragic failures.  While we’ve seen a handful of full recoveries, the list of players that continue to experience symptoms and/or fail to recover altogether is long and punctuated by exasperation.  McGrady was half the man he used to be after his procedure(s), and is still unable to stay on the court for more than a few games at a time.  With Oden, a promising career may have come to a crashing end before it ever had a chance to take flight.

With Sizemore, it’s hard to imagine him every recovering to the point where he’s back to being, well, Grady Sizemore.  Don’t forget, Sizemore was going to be baseball’s next superstar, with a rare combination of power, speed and charisma.  He was a three time All Star and the cornerstone of the Indians offense.  A 30-30 player as recently as 2008 (33 HR, 38 SB), Sizemore has just 17 steals in his last 200 games over the course of the last three seasons and is now barely a threat to run.  In 61 games in 2011, he hasn’t managed to swipe a single bag, being thrown out twice.  While he has hit 28 home runs over that same span, his power too has clearly diminished, with a slugging % of .426 compared to a .491 mark through the first five years of his career.  And while he was only a .279 hitter before the injury bug started to take its toll, he’s managed just a .239 AVG since—a below-replacement level outfielder in almost every sense.

Sustaining further injury to an already ailing knee will only serve to exacerbate an already tenuous situation and one that will force the Cleveland Indians to make a difficult decision as a franchise.  Sizemore has an $8.5 million team option ($500k buyout), and that number doesn’t seem appropriate for a player with as much obvious downside as Sizemore offers.  The questions surrounding Sizemore’s future are varied.  If not Cleveland, where?  Assuming Sizemore is unable to return to form (and that certainly seems to be the case), what type of player will he be and how much is that player worth on the open market?