Warning: “Religion” post. Not for everyone.

“Unfortunately, it happened. It just reinforces to me that if I’m out there getting ready for a season and taking my focus off the most important thing in my recovery, which is my relationship with Christ, it’s amazing how those things creep back in.”

I’m sure most of you have heard about Josh Hamilton’s relapse into alcohol, and maybe have seen the Girls Gone Wild-esque pics of him with other women than his wife. For myself, I hate hearing about things like this, because while I’m not an outspoken Christian like Josh was before his lapse, or many other athletes you see on TV or people you may know, I am a subscriber in many of the things they believe and I feel like their behavior discredits the message. It is the whole “your actions speak so loudly I can’t hear a word you’re saying thing”.  On the other hand, I feel a lot of compassion for Josh and can’t bring myself to condemn him in the slightest.

Here’s the deal:

Christians are human beings. For that matter, so is the man whom we call our Savior. We believe he also was God, but yet he was tempted in ways I cannot even fathom, and yet he never missed the mark. He never stepped out of selflessness and into selfishness. But we feel assured that as he was tempted like we were, we have a God who “gets” us. (Hebrews 4:14-16)

Josh hasn’t been a Christian that long. This is a pretty recent change. While we believe the new birth happens instantly once a person acknowledges the sovereignty of Christ over their lives, growth is a process, much like physical growth. No one is born a full-grown human being, and no one is “reborn” a fully developed spiritual Christian, either. Development takes time and the support of others, which means a pastor and local church. We still have the same bodies and minds that like doing the same things we used to do. For Josh, that’s drugs and alcohol. Christianity isn’t about a change of mind per se’, although that is part of it, and that is the part of it that takes time. It takes time to learn to outgrow selfishness and learn to love our neighbors as ourself. (Romans 10:9-10, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 1 Peter 2:1-2, 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, Romans 12:1-2, Ephesians 4:11-24)

Christ directs us to “abide in Him”. We believe that while it is Christ’s life than now lives in us, it’s up to us to stick with him. This is what Josh acknowledged, that he had got away from the things that helped him in the first place. If we don’t stick closely to our relationship with God, we’ll naturally revert back to the old things we enjoyed. He’ll never leave us or stops loving us, but we can grow distant from him just like you can grow distant with a relative or friend and open the door to all sorts of wrong. (John 15:1-7, Hebrews 13:5, 2 Peter 2:20-22)

Truly spiritual Christians will want to help Josh, not throw rocks at him. A man once observed that “the church is the only army that kills off its own wounded.” Sad but true. Now is the time for Josh to have the support of his friends, family and pastors. We don’t know what was going on in his mind that day, his mood, or what was going on in his life. I think if we had the money and influence that he has, some of us may have done a lot worse. (Galatians 6:1-2, John 8:1-11)

Despite this, he probably should be held to a higher standard. You can’t claim to love God and do this sort of thing and not offend people or open yourself up to criticism. It shouldn’t come from the church, but it’s going to come from some people and in some ways it’s probably deserved. His actions still have repercussions. The key is to wake up and move on. I, for one, don’t know how his wife is going to handle this, but she couldn’t be blamed for getting away from him. (Proverbs 1:31, 25:26)

I’ve long had misgivings about professional Christian athletes. They have a lot more money than most of us do, work with a much wilder crowd than most of us do and travel a lot more than most of us do. They’re away from their families, and like us, they get bored and lonely at times. I don’t think I could do it. I just hope they have some teammates that can help them stay accountable.

I can relate to Josh, as I was a world class screw-up myself until Christ. It’s only through a relationship with God I was able to get off of drugs and have some order and sanity in my life. (Personal story time). I also know what it is like to get away from that and put my focus on the wrong things, and have the temptations to do some stupid things come charging back into my life. I never missed it in such a public way as Josh, and I know that the hardest person in the world to forgive can be yourself. You have to learn to brush aside failure and go back to disciplining your mind and putting under the physical inclinations to do wrong through the help of God’s Spirit. The best part of it, I have found, is that God is not condemning but rather amazingly merciful and gracious. (Micah 7:18-19, Isaiah 43:25). I’ve also found the more I dwell on failure, the more I end up repeating it.

I know a lot of you may find this weird or strange, and I promise I’ll be sticking to baseball with 99% of my writing instead of preaching, but I just wanted to address it and hopefully bring some understanding. Anyway, I just hope Josh can put this behind him. His story has been an inspiring one to say the least, and if he chooses to do so, he can learn from this and move on and still be an inspiration. I’m rooting for him.

Sorry other blog. I’ve neglected you. 

The Cardinals threw a bunch of crud on the wall, and none of it stuck. So they decided to sign a real brand name, bona fide LOOGY in Dennys Reyes.  Well alright. The deal is apparently for 2 years and $3M. 

The past three seasons Reyes has posted tRA+’s of 158, 106 and 107. You read the first one right. In his first season as a Twin, he was lights out. He was 2 WAR in 2006, then .4 and .6 last season, and projects to be .6 WAR again, worth a fair market value of $3M. So it’s a decent enough bargain.

Like many a LOOGY, he’s a sinker/slider pitcher. According to his Pitch F/X card at Kalk’s, his sinker comes in at 91 MPH while his slider is 85MPH. Naturally, he throws the slider to lefties nearly 50% of the time. His O-Swing% is 30.9% and batters make contact with those pitches just 40.6% of the time. He’s held LHB in check last year, to the tune of a  .202/.250/.257 line. 

TLR now has his precious two veteran lefties and everyone’s happy. Well, everyone but Royce Ring, Charlie Manning and Ian Ostlund. They’ll be disgruntled and in camp until Mexico (and Reyes) eventually gets eliminated from the WBC.

Good for 2nd place. Well, that stinks. I still think they can do better than that projection, but it’s gonna take a healthy Chris Carpenter and a lot of other breaks to hit 90 wins.

 Beware of the…Reds? Astros in the basement!

So Joel Pineiro is all in a huff about not being included in Puerto Rico’s three man rotation for the WBC. Instead of sucking it up and pitching out of the bullpen for his homeland, he is taking his ball and going home. Adding to the drama, Jose Oquendo is PR’s manager.

“I was very disappointed, very heartbroken. I felt disrespected,” Pineiro said prior to this morning’s workout at Roger Dean Stadium. “Everybody knows that there have been only two pitchers in Puerto Rico the past 8-10 years who have been consistent starters, Javier Vazquez and myself. To hear that from [Oquendo], it was such a setback. I’m very disappointed. I can’t believe I’m talking to you guys about this.”

Whoa,buddy. First of all, I’m not sure there is such a thing as a consistent starter from Puerto Rico considering who made the team in your stead. Secondly, the only thing consistent about  the last 5 years of Joel Pineiro is that he’s been one of the worst starters in all of baseball.  

tRA*

Sanchez: 2008 4.52, 2007 4.95.

Snell: 08 5.58, 07 4.37. 

Pineiro: 08 5.24, 07 4.86, 06 6.14

As I said, I’m not sure there is such a thing as a consistent SP from Puerto Rico, but I’d rather take my chances with Jonathan Sanchez and Ian Snell, too.

The Cardinals have stuck with Rick Ankiel through thick and through thin, but now they’re taking him to arbitration?

According to Fangraphs, Ankiel’s win values the past two seasons have been $4.3 and $8.7M.  His CHONE projection calls for 1.4 WAR, worth $6.2M on the free agent market, something Ankiel is only a year away from.

The names in his similarity scores are a lot of boom then bust types, do the Cardinals believe that is what will become of Ankiel? Maybe I’m being a homer, but I don’t really think Ankiel is going to flame out as fast as say, Jason Lane. Hey, it’s not like they are using the extra payroll on a free agent. He’s going to be a bargain no matter how it shakes out, but they should’ve just paid the man and spared the hurt feelings.

80-82.

3rd place. Bleh. I think they’ll do better than that, but …. bleh.

I’m trying to cut down on the blogging habit for a while, but this certainly came as news and is worth commenting on.

So before securing a replacement for Adam Kennedy, the team let him go? Weird. Very weird. I thought the org and the player kissed and made up and everyone was happy. Apparently Tony was not. The relevant question now is: Who wins the job? You would think the club would look outside with several good candidates out there, but Goold says they’ll look internally.

Here are the in-house candidates by their CHONE projections:

• Joe Thurston – .322 wOBA. I got nothing on his defense, but in his last three minor league seasons he was +8, -4, -5 per 150 games.
• Brendan Ryan – .308 wOBA- minus 4 on defense.
• Brian Barden – .310 wOBA, neutral on defense.
• Jarrett Hoffpauir – .324 wOBA, last three seasons in minors -9, 0, -15.
• Skip Schumaker – .328 wOBA, glove???

I had Kennedy for .8 WAR but if he replicated his 2008 campaign in which he was a + 10 defender, he’d be at 1.2 WAR. Running each player through the spreadsheet and giving the starter 500 PA’s I get:

Thurston: .8 WAR
Ryan: .1 WAR
Barden .5 WAR
Hoffpauir .4 WAR
Skip .7 WAR, who really knows with the glove. I put him down as a -8 defender, and I think I am being nice.

Thurston projects to be every bit as good as Kennedy, if you can call that good. The bottom line is ditching Kennedy is no huge loss. If Skip can prove us wrong and be serviceable at 2B, it could clear the way for Colby.

Jerry Crasnick reported last week that the Cardinals phoned Ray Durham to see if he’d be interested in backing up Kennedy but nothing really happened. Hopefully Mo calls again. Eric Seidman of Fangraphs earlier today made a great case for Durham. I know the Cardinals would rather not eat AK’s salary and pay for another 2B, but Durham could probably be had for cheap. I think he’d look good batting 2nd, 7th or maybe even leading off if he can come close to posting another .380 on base%.

It all makes sense now.  Let’s face it, and if you haven’t known this for a long time now you’re only fooling yourself: there are no other moves to be made.

It looks like Russ Springer is going to sign a one year deal with the A’s, reportedly for 1 year at $3M. MLB.com says Springer will likely setup for “dual closers” Brad Ziegler and Joey Devine. I wasn’t aware Oakland was going with a two-headed closer tandem, but regardless, bully for Springer.

Springer was a pretty pleasant surprise the two seasons that he was a Cardinal. After posting tRA’s of 3.48 and 4.41 in 2005 and 2006 with the Astros, Springer showed a lot of improvement while in St. Louis, putting up tRA’s of 2.63 and 3.30. Oddly enough, these marked improvements came between ripe old ages of 38-39.

Despite all of his improvements, Springer was under appreciated by the Cardinals. For one, they didn’t offer him arbitration and showed no interest in bringing him back. That part I can understand a little, after all, he did turn 40 and the Cardinals have no shortage of options when it comes to right-handed relief. I get the front office’s stance towards Springer, but I don’t understand La Russa’s.

I say that because Springer was the best reliever the Cardinals had two years running, but despite that, TLR never really seemed to trust him in the high leverage situations. Springer led Cardinal relievers in WPA/LI two seasons in a row, 1.65 in 2007 and 1.01 last season, yet his average leverage index was .78 and 1.05 the past two seasons. To put that into context, Ryan Franklin had a WPA/LI of .03 last season and his average LI was 1.7. McClellan had a WPA/LI of .14 and his leverage index was 1.58. Jason Isringhausen’s LI was 1.5 and his WPL/LI was a dismal -.8. Perhaps more damning is how Randy Flores had average LI’s of 1.34 in ‘08 and .94 in ‘07. How in the world could anyone trust Randy Flores more than Russ Springer? How could you trust anyone less than Randy Flores is probably the better question.

While La Russa pitched him more in higher leverage situations last season, he gave Ryan Franklin and Jason Isringhausen opportunity after opportunity and they blew something around 8 bazillion saves and it cost the Cardinals a chance at playing in October. La Russa had Springer all along and yet he never gave him one save opportunity.

Now Springer’s headed to Oakland and it looks like he’ll be given more of a chance to pitch in key situations. Guesstimating some, Springer should post around a 3.50 ERA over 60 innings. The average LI for a set up man is 1.3. So that makes him project to be worth 1.3 WAR, worth about $5.8 M. That would be the high end of his worth, but I think it’s at least realistic considering his new home ballpark. On the low end, let’s say he regresses and gives the A’s a 3.80 ERA and lower his leverage to 1, then he’s worth .6 WAR or $3.3 M, which is still a little less what they are paying him.

Leave it to the A’s to know a decent bargain when they see one.

After a brief stay here at WordPress, I’ve packed up and moved over to MVN.  Update your bookmarks and RSS feeds according, yes, that means all seven of you.