Since Jay Gibbons’s bulging biceps (that he dutifully showed off while playing) and solid power numbers were aided by PEDs, wouldn’t it be reasonable now that he’s apparently unable to perform for the Orioles to try and recoup some or all of the money still owed on his contract? Gibbons signed a four-year, $21.1 million contract in January 2006—-ESPN Story—-and in addition to the PED revelations, he only played in 84 games last year and his numbers this spring make him look like he’d be lucky to get out of A ball without the special “help” of PEDs. With the Orioles releasing him, why are they so agreeable to paying off the remainder of that contract? It seems to me that in this case, they’d have a pretty solid argument for a player’s performance misleading them into thinking he was worth all of that money and could void the contract.
    I’m no lawyer, but the players contracts have morals clauses to get the team out of paying the player if they commit a severe enough crime, so what about the small print that shields the teams in the case of someone like Gibbons? Jay Gibbons was a steroids-assisted player, capitalized on it by receiving a lavish contract,  then couldn’t perform once testing came into baseball; why is he still receiving his paychecks as the Orioles are dumping him? The money isn’t the point, but it’s not like it’s a small amount either. We’re talking about almost $12 million going to a guy who’s unlikely to get picked up by another team and isn’t going to be seen on a big league diamond again; not because of the PED usage, but because he can’t play without them.
    This is what’s so strange about these contracts; I would think that a team like the Orioles could at least try and get some of that wasted money back. Just as I suggested weeks ago that the Yankees should sue Carl Pavano for not putting forth a reasonable effort to fulfill his part of the agreement he signed when he joined them, the case of Gibbons is more clear cut. At least Pavano has his injuries (as piddly as some of them have appeared, and as uninterested in making any kind of good faith attempt to come back) to fall back on. Gibbons has no argument to say that he was a good enough player without the PEDs that he would have gotten the contract anyway, because it’s quite obvious that he wouldn’t have.
    As reviled as some owners are (specifically someone like Peter Angelos), they have rights as well. One of those rights should be a good-faith performance from their highly paid employees. Angelos’s legal career was made by representing labor unions; one would think that he’d be able to get some of that wasted money back if he really wanted to. And it’s not the money itself, it’s the principle. The guy’s unable to play anymore because he can’t use the drugs, so why should he still be getting paid?

    Please check out my new book The Prince Of New York’s 2008 Baseball Guide, also available on Amazon.com and BN.com.

• Astros Release Woody Williams:

    For a team with as many issues in their starting rotation as the Astros, this doesn’t say much about what Woody Williams has left in the tank. That being said, I think that (as Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman seem to be implying here) it’s not very fair to judge a veteran starter on spring training performance.
    I can see both sides of the argument. The Astros coaching staff and management must have figured that Williams wasn’t going to improve much on last year’s awful showing and it made no sense to put him out there if he couldn’t compete; on the other hand, veterans (especially those that get by on location and changing speeds) need time to get their timing down and legs under them; releasing them before the season even starts makes no sense, especially for a team with the issues in their starting rotation that the Astros have.
    I’m not prepared to say Williams is done. The Astros are paying his salary; many teams who need some veteran starting pitching for the back of the rotation will look at a veteran that knows how to pitch. Even if he can only help them win a game or two, that’s not insignificant in the long term; someone’s going to pick him up and try to get something out of him.

• Many Are Suddenly Down On The Angels:

    With all their injuries, specifically to 2/5 of their starting rotation in John Lackey and Kelvim Escobar and the indispensable Scot Shields, I can understand the sudden wariness at the Angels prospects this season. That the Mariners have seemingly improved so much makes it even easier to pick the Mariners in the division instead. I’m not prepared to give up on the Angels though. Because their pitching is so deep and they’re run so well, it’s not as catastrophic for a team like the Angels to have so many injuries, especially in the early season.
    One thing I point to with the Angels in regard to how their system wins them games is 2006. Their starting pitching staff was shaky in spots; their bullpen wasn’t as deep as usual and their offense was mediocre at best; they fell to nine games under .500 at nearly the halfway point in that season and were still able to right the ship in time to win 89 games and put a scare into the division champion Athletics. It says more what a team does in a bad year than what they do in a good year and the Angels always find a way to win enough games to keep themselves in contention. That comes from management and team commitment.

• The New Blogsite:

    I like the new graphics and everything they’re trying to improve. I’m not all that thrilled about the filter that’s editing the word C-R-A-P (who knows what other innocuous words from the past are being blotted out); nor do I think it was a great idea to get this moving right before the season started, but I think that was due to circumstances beyond everyone’s control. I also don’t like the idea of filtering the comments for approval, but that’s arguable. Hopefully the personal design stuff (Links, BOOKS—-The Prince Of New York’s 2008 Baseball Guide also available on Amazon.com and BN.com, and other things we use to personalize our blogs) will be available soon.

    There appears to be an attempt afoot for the Mets to put little whispers in the wind about players that they let go to soften the blow of public protest. The latest is Ruben Gotay. On today’s Mike and the Mad Dog radio show on WFAN, there were implications (nothing specific) that Gotay may have been a bad influence on Jose Reyes. This dovetails with the nuggets that were planted in the media this past off season about Luis Castillo when there was a question as to whether he was going to return to the Mets as a free agent. There was circumstantial evidence that Castillo was having a "bad" influence on Reyes, which led to Reyes’s awful second half swoon. I do not understand the idea behind this other than self-preservation.
    First, is Jose Reyes so easily influenced and naive that he blindly follows other players into their behaviors? One would think that Reyes, given his burgeoning fame and gregarious reputation, would be the one that the other players would be following, not the other way around. If Gotay is being let go because he’s truly a "bad" influence, it would be one thing, but if the Mets are just putting this out there to shield themselves for making a decision that could come back to haunt them, it’s a trend that has been in practice for awhile. They did the same thing with Scott Kazmir when they stupidly traded him to the Devil Rays, and Lastings Milledge received similar treatment on his way out the door.
    Both Kazmir and Milledge were top round draft picks who received hefty signing bonuses from the Mets when they were drafted. Didn’t the Mets look into the backgrounds of these players before using a top pick and doling out millions of dollars for their signatures on a contract? Or is it just politically expedient to say, "We were concerned about him off the field," and justify an ill-thought-out decision? This is the same team that put up with Paul Lo Duca for two years; kept a maniac like Mike DiFelice around; had guys like Tony Tarasco on their roster; and allowed John Franco to essentially make personnel decisions for the front office. None of these players have squeaky clean resumes either.
    Once David Eckstein turned down the Mets offer to play second base for them, they had few options other than to get Castillo back, then came the stories that the Mets "looked into" the Reyes/Castillo allegations and found nothing to substantiate the claims. Ruben Gotay might very well be a bad influence on Reyes and if that’s the case, good riddance; but is it necessary to plant these little stories to protect themselves in the case of a player who leaves and becomes productive if it’s not even true? It strikes me as hedging bets and if a person in the front office has confidence in his decisions—-even if they don’t work out—-he should have the confidence to make the move and not resort to making the player look bad as he’s heading out the door. It’s called taking the high road.

    Please check out and purchase my new book The Prince Of New York’s 2008 Baseball Guide also available on Amazon.com and BN.com.

    **The blogsite will be unavailable for awhile later this evening as the administrators are moving the entire site to a new network. There will be a prolonged outage so there’s nothing wrong with your computer or internet connection.

• Mets Put Gotay On Waivers:

    Someone’s going to claim Ruben Gotay and the Mets are going to lose his potentially lethal bat for no reason other than manager Willie Randolph doesn’t think he can field and the organization, for some unfathomable reason, wants to keep Fernando Tatis or Brady Clark. There may be things going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about in regards to this move, but unless we’re informed of those things, I have to make judgments based on face value; on face value, this decision makes no sense. The logic is so fractured that it’s bordering on the absurd. The Mets decided that Gotay can’t field well enough, nor hit from the right side well enough to justify keeping him on the roster, yet they cut him and instead of keeping another middle infielder, they have a backup third baseman and apparent backup left fielder in Tatis, and a pure journeyman outfielder in Clark.
    I also have some concerns about Randolph’s talent recognition skills and decision-making. It seems to me that Randolph makes decisions based on his experiences as a player. He doesn’t think Gotay can field because it’s quite possible that he’s comparing Gotay as a second baseman to himself. Randolph was a fine all-around player, but that doesn’t mean a potential backup infielder has to be a comparable player to Willie Randolph to be useful. Randolph has done things like this before with his insistence on using Joe Smith last year while the rookie was clearly overmatched as the season wore on; then there was the egregious 2005 decision to use the recently released Shingo Takatsu in an important game against the Marlins only to see Takatsu blow the game. Both threw sidearm, and if I were to check Randolph’s history against sidearmers, I bet I’d find that he didn’t hit them well.
    It would be all well and good if they had to choose between a guy like Marlon Anderson and Gotay; that would be a no-brainer and they’d have to keep Anderson, but they’re going to use Damion Easley if they need a backup infielder and then make roster moves to bring up someone like Anderson Hernandez if they need an infielder for a longer period of time (or they might just bring back Jose Valentin). And all of this is in the interests of keeping Fernando Tatis or Brady Clark. And Gotay can hit left-handed and since he’s only 25, who’s to say his right-handed hitting and fielding wouldn’t improve enough to make him viable. Instead of Tatis or Clark, they might as well just keep an extra pitcher. This was just a bad mistake.

• Rolen Possibly Out Until May With Finger Injury:

    Scott Rolen’s reputation has taken a beating with a second ugly divorce from his previous team because of irreconcilable differences with his manager, first with the Phillies and Larry Bowa and then with the Cardinals and Tony La Russa. One thing that is somewhat unfair is when he gets lumped in with other injury-prone and disinterested players like Carl Pavano, J.D. Drew and Mark Prior. Rolen’s injuries have either been out of bad luck or because he plays very, very hard; but they’re still injuries and they keep him out of the lineup for extended periods on a regular basis. Now this finger injury, which sounds gruesome—-MLB.com Story—-is likely to keep him out of the Blue Jays lineup until May. The Blue Jays (and especially GM J.P. Ricciardi) need Rolen to be on the field and the player he was two years ago.
     I wouldn’t have made the trade of Troy Glaus for Rolen because of the way in which Rolen has had problems with his managers; his injury history and his contract. Glaus has a player option after this year and Rolen is still signed for the next three seasons. No matter what happened with Glaus, the worst case scenario had him as a Blue Jay for the next two years and hungry for another big contract this year. Even though he was just unlucky, Rolen is always hurt and if he’s not in the lineup, he can’t help the team contend, which I think they’re going to have to do to save Ricciardi’s job. It was too risky a move and it’s already looking bad because they’re not going to have Rolen for at least the first month, and who knows what they’re going to get out of him when he comes back?

• The Prince Of New York’s 2008 Baseball Guide:

    The book jumped about 900,000 spots on Amazon.com and I’m grateful to whomever has purchased a copy. For those who haven’t, it’s also available on BN.com and at the following link in paperback and E-book: I-Universe.com.

    In 2000, after one-quarter of the season, the Mets were obviously a playoff and World Series contender when starting shortstop Rey Ordonez broke his arm against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Backup Melvin Mora was inserted into the lineup and his fielding gave the Mets pause as to whether they could trust his glove in a big game. Manager Bobby Valentine had an affinity for Mora and felt he was one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball, but GM Steve Phillips decided that he couldn’t trust Mora as his shortstop, sought a defensively minded and offensively solid replacement and consummated the deal at the trading deadline which sent Mora to the Orioles for Mike Bordick.
    Bordick had developed into a power threat for the Orioles, hit only four homers with the Mets, played in 56 games in the regular season, didn’t hit at all in the playoffs and was benched in the final game of the World Series in favor of the better-hitting Kurt Abbott. Bordick returned to the Orioles as a free agent after the season and Mora has developed into a highly productive bat in his time with the Orioles. There was no short-term gain for the Mets and they would have been better off going with Mora and dealing with his shortcomings rather than make this desperation move.
    This would all be ancient history because the Mets wouldn’t have beaten the Yankees that year with or without Mora, but they’re poised to make a similar mistake with another solid bat in dumping Ruben Gotay in favor of the washed up Fernando Tatis for reasons that aren’t entirely clear—-NY Times Story—-and the decision might yield similar results.
    Gotay isn’t a very good fielder and the basis of keeping Tatis seems to be that he bats right-handed and Gotay is a switch-hitter who is weak from the right side, but other than that what would be the explanation for this type of decision? Gotay, at age 25, has nowhere to go but up in his defensive work and has proven that he can hit and hit with some power; Tatis is 33; was out of the big leagues last year; batted 56 times for the Orioles in 2006 with poor production; and was out of the big leagues for two years before that. Are the Mets really going to risk trying to get Gotay through waivers (he’s out of minor league options) to keep Fernando Tatis on their roster?
    Never mind the absence of a true backup middle infielder if they choose to go this route; never mind the righty-lefty stuff. If the Mets were torn between a solid righty bat who could be counted on for production off the bench and Gotay, it would be one thing, but this is Fernando Tatis we’re talking about. If the Mets actually do this, they’re going to lose Gotay and his bat and probably get little or nothing in return for him. Is Tatis worth that? It’s a stupid idea to consider and even stupider if they follow through on it. Fernando Tatis indeed.

    Please check out my new book The Prince Of New York’s 2008 Baseball Guide, also available on Amazon.com and Barnes And Noble.

    There have been many searches for guesses as to which player is going to lead their respective leagues in which categories (presumably due to fantasy league stuff; just for the record, I don’t play fantasy baseball and the overwhelming majority of my fantasies have little if anything to do with sports). With that in mind, here are my predictions for the league leaders in the important categories:

        Batting Leaders:

• Batting Average—-Amercian League: Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners; National League: Chase Utley, Philadelphia Phillies
• Hits—-American League: Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners; National League: Jimmy Rollins, Philadelphia Phillies
• Runs—-American League: Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees; National League: Jimmy Rollins, Philadelphia Phillies
• Singles—-American League: Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners; National League: Willy Taveras, Colorado Rockies
• Doubles—-American League: Grady Sizemore, Cleveland Indians; National League: David Wright, New York Mets
• Triples—-American League: Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay Rays; National League: Jose Reyes, New York Mets
• Home Runs—-American League: Miguel Cabrera, Detroit Tigers; National League: Mark Teixeira, Atlanta Braves
• RBI—-American League: Miguel Cabrera, Detroit Tigers; National League: Mark Teixeira, Atlanta Braves
• Walks—-American League: David Ortiz, Boston Red Sox; National League: Ryan Howard, Philadelphia Phillies
• Strikeouts—-American League: Curtis Granderson, Detroit Tigers; National League: Ryan Howard, Philadelphia Phillies
• Stolen Bases—-American League: Chone Figgins, Los Angeles Angels; National League: Jose Reyes, New York Mets
• On Base Percentage—-American League: Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees; National League: Chase Utley, Philadelphia Phillies
• Slugging %—-American League: Miguel Cabrera, Detroit Tigers; National League: Ryan Howard, Philadelphia Phillies
• OPS+—-American League: Miguel Cabrera, Detroit Tigers; National League: Mark Teixeira, Atlanta Braves
• Extra Base Hits—-American League: Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees; National League: Matt Holliday, Colorado Rockies

    Pitching Leaders:

• Wins—-American League: Justin Verlander, Detroit Tigers; National League: Aaron Harang, Cincinnati Reds
• ERA—-American League: Justin Verlander, Detroit Tigers; National League: Johan Santana, New York Mets
• Win/Loss %—-American League: C.C. Sabathia, Cleveland Indians; National League: Johan Santana, New York Mets
• Strikeouts—-American League: C.C. Sabathia, Cleveland Indians; National League: Johan Santana, New York Mets
• WHIP—-American League: C.C. Sabathia, Cleveland Indians; National League: Aaron Harang, Cincinnati Reds
• Walks—-American League: Daniel Cabrera, Baltimore Orioles; National League: Carlos Zambrano, Chicago Cubs
• Hits Allowed per 9 IP—-American League: Justin Verlander, Detroit Tigers; National League: Johan Santana, New York Mets
• Innings Pitched—-American League: C.C. Sabathia, Cleveland Indians; National League: Aaron Harang, Cincinnati Reds
• Home Runs Allowed—-American League: Daisuke Matsuzaka, Boston Red Sox; National League: Aaron Harang, Cincinnati Reds
• ERA+—-American League: C.C. Sabathia, Cleveland Indians; National League: Johan Santana, New York Mets
• Strikeout/Walk Ratio—-American League: C.C. Sabathia, Cleveland Indians; National League: Aaron Harang, Cincinnati Reds
• Adjusted ERA—-American League: C.C. Sabathia, Cleveland Indians; National League: Aaron Harang, Cincinnati Reds
• Shutouts—-American League: Justin Verlander, Detroit Tigers; National League: Brandon Webb, Arizona Diamondbacks
• Saves—-American League: Francisco Rodriguez, Los Angeles Angels; National League: Francisco Cordero, Cincinnati Reds
• Games Finished—-American League: Joe Nathan, Minnesota Twins; National League: Francisco Cordero, Cincinnati Reds
• Blown Saves—-American League: Joe Borowski, Cleveland Indians; National League: Brad Lidge, Philadelphia Phillies

    I’m not a stats-obsessed-guy, so I’m sure I’ve forgotten a couple of things and there’s every possibility that the math doesn’t work out for some of the picks, but this is what I got for your consideration.

    Please check out my new book The Prince Of New York’s 2008 Baseball Guide, also available on  BN.com and Amazon.com. 

    It’s strange how managers are often blamed and take the fall for a team’s lack of success, but the general managers are given a pass and allowed to make one mistake after another, try and rebuild their teams again and again while giving shadowy and faulty explanations for the decisions they make. Years ago, before the internet and access to information made it easier for a GM to make himself famous with his command of stats, theories and justifications for their decisions, GMs were less ubiquitous in the press. The emergence of the GM with the power vocabulary complete with corporate doubletalk utilized to make himself sound like he knows what he’s talking about even if the evidence proves otherwise has become prevalent and hypnotized more than one owner. I don’t give these guys a pass though, and here are my picks for GMs on the hotseat before the season really gets going:

• Brian Sabean, San Francisco Giants:

    Rob Neyer posted this link to ShysterBall on Monday and there are some good points as to why Sabean should be held responsible for the Giants current sorry state, but there are other reasons why he should be at least given a couple of years to try and fix the mess. For years, the Giants strategy was to "Build around Barry" with Barry Bonds and it worked quite well to ride their star and put ancillary pieces around him to try and win with veterans. The Giants have a budget and they had to make a choice of spending chunks of that budget on scouting, development and signing draft picks, or spending it on the big league roster to try and win immediately. Even though they never won a championship (they should have won in 2002), it’s hard to argue with their success. Every year with Bonds (other than a three year stretch in the mid-nineties and toward the end of his tenure), the Giants were in contention for a championship, and I’m sure most other teams would trade a few lean years after the fact for annual opportunities to win a title. Of course, when mortgaging for the future the bill eventually comes due (it’s sort of the baseball version of the lending crisis in America) and the Giants are going to have to deal with the consequences.
    This current roster is paying the price for signing the aging veterans they imported to support Bonds. The argument that they should have moved on from Bonds and started the rebuilding process earlier is valid, but Sabean should receive a pass for that as well because he wanted to move along after 2006, but the marketing department wanted to keep Bonds and the revenue his home run chase brought in to the Giants. It’s hard to fault Sabean for that. As for the signing of the likes of Aaron Rowand, there wasn’t much else available to make it appear as if they were doing something to be competitive. They have to rebuild, but Sabean deserves a chance to be the one to reconstruct the team once the fallout from the Bonds era and its positives and negatives are allowed to settle down.

• J.P. Ricciardi, Toronto Blue Jays:

    I’m beginning to think of Ricciardi as baseball’s equivalent of a cockroach and able to survive any type of earth-shattering event. Ricciardi has had a controversial and, let’s be honest, not too successful run as the Blue Jays GM. Amid the injuries, confrontations, out-and-out lies and failure to live up to his arrogant bluster of creating a winning team within a couple of years when he was hired, Ricciardi has had many negatives to go along with the positives of his tenure. Now the Blue Jays are expected to truly contend for a playoff spot; not just hover around the outskirts of the playoff race, fall out of contention and have a hot streak to make their record and position appear to be more competitive than they were, but truly contend. I don’t think they have to make the playoffs to save Ricciardi’s job, but I think they have to be in the race late into the season. After his lying about B.J. Ryan’s injury in last year’s spring training, I think Ricciardi was in more trouble in Toronto than was let on and they have to be good this year, no injury excuses or blame to go around. It’s on him.

• Kenny Williams, Chicago White Sox:

    The White Sox are poorly constructed and have made a series of strange and risky moves since Williams’s aggressiveness won the White Sox a World Series in 2005. Now both he and manager Ozzie Guillen are on the hotseat and if the team is as bad as they look and as bad as I think they’re going to be, I can see Guillen and Williams jettisoned. They might survive the season because one scenario I can envision is the Cardinals being so bad and hopeless that Tony La Russa is allowed out of the final year of his contract and he returns to the White Sox to finish his managing career where it started and owner Jerry Reinsdorf also hires former Cards GM Walt Jocketty as his GM.

• Bill Bavasi, Seattle Mariners:

    This team is expected to win this year. Bavasi’s job was saved by the Mariners surprising leap into contention last season, but he didn’t do a particularly good job and many of the acquisitions he’s made—-Horacio Ramirez, Richie Sexson, Jarrod Washburn—-have been expensive disasters. Now he’s got a good pitching staff and still isn’t on much steadier ground than he was on last year. If the team doesn’t match their win total from last season and at least appear to be in contention, Bavasi will be out.

• Ned Colletti, Los Angeles Dodgers:

    He’s wasted a lot of owner Frank McCourt’s money with his penchant for bringing in veteran players (he did work for the Giants and Brian Sabean before coming to the Dodgers) and the team isn’t going to be able to blame the manager this time since they spent to hire Joe Torre. Juan Pierre was already unhappy about moving to left field and now it looks like he’s going to be a part-time player making $9 million a year. Jason Schmidt is still a $16 million a year question mark and then there was the absurd waiver claim of Esteban Loaiza and his $7 million a year salary. Torre’ s going to be there one way or the other, Colletti might not be if the Dodgers stumble.

• Brian Cashman, New York Yankees:

    With the explosiveness and uninhibited running commentaries from new owner Hank Steinbrenner, the Yankees are expected to be at least as successful as they were in the last few years under manager Joe Torre. If they make the playoffs and lose as they have recently, Cashman will probably be safe; if not…
    He’s gotten everything he’s wanted in running the team under Hank. Cashman hired the manager he wanted in Joe Girardi and held onto the Yankees young prospects in resisting the lure of a deal for Johan Santana. That Santana ended up with the Mets will make things worse if the young pitchers—-Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy—-aren’t as great as advertised over a full season, and if Santana is a Cy Young candidate for the Mets. Cashman’s the one responsible now; he’s made moves and statements that make it appear as though he’s searching for credit rather than what’s in the best interests of winning immediately, so he’s going to get the blame if things go badly. There has been talk that Cashman may want to move on after this season because his contract is up, but I find that hard to believe. If the team doesn’t perform, he may not have a choice but to move on.

    For analysis like this and much more, please check out and purchase my new book The Prince Of New York’s 2008 Baseball Guide in paperback and E-book and also available on Amazon.com and BN.com.

    The last season that Kerry Wood was fully healthy was 2003.
    Over the past four seasons, he’s thrown a combined 229 innings.
    Over the past three seasons, he’s thrown a combined 89 innings.
    One thing that he has consistently proven over the course of his star-crossed career is that he cannot be counted on to stay healthy. Now the Cubs are putting their playoff hopes on his rickety right shoulder by installing him as their full-time closer? Let me say here that this is not going to work for the long term because I don’t believe that Wood is suddenly going to be able to stay healthy enough to do the job over a full season.
    If the Cubs intended to use Wood as the closer, my suggestion has always been to use him as an occasional closer early in the season while monitoring his health, results and performance and slowly work him into the full time job as the season moves along. Putting Wood in this position given his fragile history and inexperience as a reliever is a recipe to get him hurt all over again. It would be one thing if the Cubs had no other options on their roster, but they have a power left-handed arm in Carlos Marmol and a veteran who’s done the job before in Bobby Howry. There was no need to name a full-time closer; in fact, the Cubs could have come straight out and said that they were going to use all three pitchers until Wood proved he was ready for the demands of the job or one of the other pitchers proved he deserved it.
    Now, they’re going with Wood for better or for worse. The notoriously impatient and demanding manager Lou Piniella isn’t going to have a long leash babying the guy who’s supposed to be the ace out of the bullpen and if Wood struggles or begs out of a game or two because of some ache or pain, Piniella’s eventually going to blow a gasket.
    Here’s my prediction for this move: Wood is going to get off to a great start; look dominating in racking up saves early in the season and revisit memories to his rookie season of 1998 when he was supposed to be the next Texas flamethrower in the vein of Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens; then he’s going to get hurt and either be out for an extended period or be unavailable for days at a time and the Cubs aren’t going to know when he’s going to pitch and when he isn’t. I’m not saying that Wood eventually wouldn’t be a good closer, but to force feed him the job in the cold weather when there are other viable options available is a mistake that is going to cost both the team and the player in the long run. Piniella’s not one to baby his players, but that is what this one player needs and he’s not getting it. This is going to be a costly mistake and it could all be easily avoided if they thought about all the ramifications of the worst case scenario and did the smart thing instead of the dramatic thing.

    Please check out and purchase my new book The Prince Of New York’s 2008 Baseball Guide available in paperback and E-book and also available on Amazon.com and BN.com.

    Unless the Los Angeles Angels have another pitcher who can pitch multiple innings on back-to-back days and be as effective as the unheralded Scot Shields, they’re in a lot of trouble if Shields’s arm "inflammation" is something that will keep the pitcher out for an extended period of time. Buster Olney linked an article from the LA Times on his blog today—-Article—-that should be cause for concern to every Angels fan because the one guy they cannot afford to lose this side of Vladimir Guerrero is Shields.
    Because he’s not the closer and he doesn’t rack up the gaudy and overrated stat of "save", Shields doesn’t get the recognition that he deserves considering how valuable he is. To have a reliever who goes out to the mound in half the games of an entire season, pitches effectively for more than one inning and takes a lead from the starter directly to the closer is one of the main reasons that the Angels have been so consistently good over the past six years. The idea that Justin Speier is going to be able to effectively replace Shields is pure fantasy.
    There has been much talk about the rash of injuries that have befallen the Angels pitching staff, but their starting rotation is deep enough that they’ll be able to get through a month or so without John Lackey and Kelvim Escobar if Ervin Santana can pick up some of the slack, Jered Weaver can provide more innings than he has in his first two seasons and with the innings that Jon Garland gobbles; Shields is a different matter altogether. One of the main reasons the Angels have been able to maintain their level of success with a vulnerable offense is their set-up man/closer combination of Shields and Francisco Rodriguez. With Shields healthy, the Angels can, more often than not, put a game that they’re leading into the sixth inning in the bank; without him, the offense is more of a concern even with the acquisition of Torii Hunter and the injured starting rotation could present more of a problem.
    What should be the most pressing concern is that there’s a reluctance to specify which part of his arm is giving him a problem. This is a strategy that NHL teams use to keep opponents from focusing on that injury to make it worse, so they refer to it as a "lower" or "upper body injury", but with Shields, they’re not only hiding the area that is inflamed, but Shields is saying that it’s an entirely separate area from the shoulder pain that prevented him from pitching in a game until March 13th. On the surface, it might behoove the Angels to hold Shields out of games until the middle of spring training considering how often he pitches during the season, but if he’s being held out because of pain and then is having pain in a new area, it doesn’t bode well.
    What makes things worse is that the AL West is going to be much tougher than it’s been in the past few seasons. The Athletics are rebuilding, but the Rangers won’t be as bad as they were last year and the Mariners have a chance to be right there with them fighting for the division. The one thing that has separated the Angels from their opponents is their starting rotation and late inning relievers; without that, they’re going to have a problem. There’s not much relief pitching available in trades because there are so many teams looking for it. The only thing the Angels are going to be able to do is hope that Speier can somehow hold the fort until a timetable for Shields’s return is available and do the best they can with what they have. As things stand right now, it’s an ominous beginning to the season and the Angels have reason to be very concerned about what they’re going to do if this is an extended absence.

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