Fresh-Squeezed Opening Day in Texas

Like every other Red Sox fan, I eagerly anticipated yesterday's Opening Day tilt down in Texas. Our first look at A-Gone and Carl Crawford couldn't come soon enough as we all wanted to see if this team was as good in real life as it sounded on paper..because, as Kenny Mayne from ESPN used to tell us, "games aren't played on paper...they're played inside TV sets." Lucky for me there's a TV in my office so I caught the first few innings at work before heading home. Right from the top, I could tell this would be a grinder. Why? One reason and one reason only: Home plate umpire Tim McClellan.

Now, before you dismiss this as just another rant from just another entitled Masshole Red Sox fan, hear me out: McClellan didn't cost the Sox the game yesterday. He squeezed EVERYBODY. Jon Lester clearly didn't have his best stuff, and I'm not blaming his performance on the strike zone. However, losing 3 inches on each side of the plate clearly didn't help. Lester was pissed at McClellan in the SECOND INNING because his strike zone was smaller than a 1st-grader's attention span. C. J. Wilson wasn't too pleased from the looks of it, either. He clearly didn't get a couple of calls in the first inning, and it cost him. So I have to ask: What's the point?

Listen up, Bud Selig. It's the first of April. Teams just spent 6 weeks in Florida and this is their first game in more normal game and perhaps climate conditions. Everyone's still a little rusty. Why subject them to 4 hours of torture that a thimble-sized strike zone creates? We all know that the size of the zone has an inverse relation to the pace of the game. A tight zone disrupts game flow, causes fielders to doze and results in these 4-hour AL-East style suck-a-thons full of sloppy fielding, 10-8 scores and multiple innings by the 10th, 11th and 12th pitchers on each squad. You could just about golf a full 18 holes in 4 hours. Who the hell wants to watch a baseball game that long, that sloppily-played, and in most cases, under less-than-ideal weather conditions?

The fans sure don't. Again, it's the FIRST OF APRIL. Most casual fans forget about baseball after the first NFL regular-season kickoff unless their teams are in a pennant race. It's been a good six months since they've given two shits about baseball. Tim McClellan and his anorexic strike zone sure aren't helping. There's the Final Four still going on. Both the NHL and NBA are in their stretch runs. While yocu're at it, NASCAR is a month into it season. Like no other time of the year, baseball really needs to scratch and claw for its viewing audience in early April. Keeping game pace and flow is critical to engaging the fans. So how do we fix it?

The Solution

Here's what we do, Mr. Selig. Look down the roster of every umpire and go through whatever statistical sources (such as BaseballProspectus.com) to evaluate the OBP for every MLB home plate umpire. The information's there. For the first two weeks of the season, make sure that the 10% of umps with the highest "called OBP" are allowed nowhere near home plate. I'm actually being borderline charitable here. If there wasn't that pesky little nuisance known as "collective bargaining," I'd say fire the fuckers outright, but I guess that wouldn't play too well with the National Labor Relations Board. Perhaps in the umpires' next contract negotiation MLB can work in some performance clauses to rid the game of those that continue to slow the pace of the game, making it next-nigh unwatchable. Mr. McClellan and his grandstanding ilk are literally killing baseball, and they must be stopped. In April. NOW.

Red Sox Offseason: Weird Harold, Bizarro Theo?

I woke up early this morning and caught the replay of MLB Network’s “Hot Stove” program to see if there was any new off-season moves that I didn’t catch earlier in the day. What I got, instead, was Harold Reynolds about 3 days behind in the news cycle. As the other panelists, including Mitch Williams and Matt Vasgersian spoke of the pending John Lackey and Mike Cameron signings by the Red Sox, Reynolds was a little slow in catching up. He wondered aloud where that left Jason Bay in the mix, noting that “the window may be closing for Bay to sign with the Red Sox.”

Ummm…have you been paying attention, Mr. Reynolds? Bay’s agent himself said over the WEEKEND (mind you, this was a Tuesday night broadcast) that Bay was prepared to move on. Toss in an imminent signing for 2 years at $15.5 million to play the same position, and you’re STILL wondering where Bay fits in? It was funny to watch Wild Thing deadpanning his expression in letting Weird Harold (Fat Albert is one of the most underrated cartoons of the 1970s, by the way) know that he probably doesn’t. I won’t speak for anyone but odds are that Mitch was wondering at that exact moment what was in Reynolds’ coffee, and also wondering if he could get some.

The moral of the story: Peter Gammons can’t get to that desk soon enough. I tired of just about everything ESPN over the last few years so I haven’t been able to catch Gammons on TV much at all, so it’ll be good to see him on MLB Network and NESN in the coming months. Sure, he uses his Twitter account to express his political views on an unsolicited basis (@pgammo, I get it. You don’t like Sarah Palin. You live in Massachusetts. That fact alone puts the smart money, sight unseen, on you leaning a little towards the left), but there’s nothing wrong with expressing your opinion. He’ll be a great add to both sets.

Regarding the signings of Cameron and Lackey, as a Sox fan, I don’t really care for them. Unlike many, I am OK with the “bridge year” concept if it involves creating payroll flexibility. A LF manned by a platoon of Jeremy Hermida, Josh Reddick and a non-tender would work fine. Paying almost $8 million/year for TWO years for an aging outfielder seems to be a bit much for the organization. Paying $16.5 million/year for an over-30 pitcher with durability issues and a less-than-stellar record in his new home park seems steep as well. Lackey was the only solid option of the barren free agent starting pitcher class of the 2009-2010 offseason. He was the best house in a bad neighborhood, if you will, and of course he was going to be overpaid. That doesn’t mean Theo Epstein has to be the one overpaying. If I have to guess, this was more Larry Lucchino’s call in a gut reaction to keep pace with The Empire rather than the emergence of Bizarro Theo. I can’t see them keeping Josh Beckett now. Really, I couldn’t see them keeping him before this; the last two years haven’t been stellar for him; he seems to be reverting to fighting himself and trying to Nuke LaLoosh everyone with his heat. That’s not going to work now, and it sure won’t work as age and loss of velocity set in while he toils well into his 30s.

Not sure what’s going on with the Sox tripping over themselves to eat $9 of $12 million for Mike Lowell in 2010. Sure…he was defensively a shell of himself at 3B, displaying range almost as bad as a previous Sox aging infielder (Mark Loretta at 2B c. 2006). He can still hit, though. It’s well-documented that he was annoyed with the ramifications of the Sox pursuit of Mark Teixeira last year. Do his declining range and ill temper over being dangled as bait for 2 years add up to a salary dump? I guess they do. Still, Adrian Beltre is NOT the answer, unless you want to overpay a Scott Boras client for declining production and advanced age, regardless of how solid the glove is, all the while further hampering payroll flexibility. If that’s the case, be my guest…y’all just go on with your bad self. It’s much cheaper to sign a 1B or go with Kotchman and move Kevin Youkilis to 3B than to find a 3B option on the open market. I don’t really like Theo’s track record with free agent signs on the left side of the infield, either. Not since Bill Mueller, anyway.

As for Harold Reynolds, as Marty McFly said in “Back to the Future,” “watch for the changes, and try to keep up, okay?”