Dear barroom denizens the world over,

I write to you today to ask simply that you take up a modest question for your consideration. It is not a question of mere fact or mere opinion; rather, like all great questions it requires a careful balance of each. I trust your besotted sagacity and ale-soaked acumen will prove more than sufficient to resolve my dispute, though it may take until the end of baseball to be sure.

My question: “Is Greg Maddux the best pitcher of all time?”

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Dear Bruce Bochy and Charlie Manuel,

We each have the distinct honor of playing a significant role in one of the most astonishing anatomical feats known to man. Somehow, through miracles of windups, scap loading, arm speed, and raw torque, Cole Hamels and Tim Lincecum are able to pitch baseballs with extraordinary skill. Both the Phillies and the Giants need their young aces a great deal. In the Phillies’ case, Hamels is the only pitcher in which the team can have consistent confidence. In the Giants’ case, well, Lincecum is the only player that matters. That is why, despite the fact that we are non-sentient ligaments in the pitching elbows of these two star pitchers, we have taken it upon ourselves to question the wisdom of your decisions.

You see, we are not just any elbow ligaments. We’re the critical ligaments in each player’s pitching elbow (for Hamels, the left, for Lincecum, the right) that create the torque and affords them such remarkable arm speed: the ulnar collateral ligament. Sure, you may have heard of us. But you usually only hear our names invoked when a pitcher has torn us. (More commonly, we are not even referred by name but by our initials: UCL. We hate that abbreviation. We think it is ugly.) The result of such a tear, unfortunately, requires the eponymous surgery first received by Tommy John in 1974. Though great gains have been made since Dr. Frank Jobe first pioneered the process of replacing ligaments like us that have torn (or snapped) with ones from the non-pitching elbow or knee, it is still an all too common occurrence, especially among younger players. Research has shown that excessive pitch counts, especially ones above 100 for a single start, can have tremendous impact on a pitcher’s health.

For the twofold reasons that, a) we don’t want to tear or snap, and b) as baseball fans we do not want to see these young pitchers get injured, we have to ask that you be very careful with us.

Allow us to use two in-game situations to demonstrate. Mr. Bochy, on April 24th against the Padres, you had Lincecum in the game. He had cruised through six innings, allowing no runs and just three hits while striking out nine batters. Needless to say, though, all those strikeouts had taken a toll on Lincecum’s arm, of which one of us is a central part. Through those six innings, he had pitched a total of 109 pitches. This excess by itself would not have been a big deal. We are reasonable; we understand pitchers need to finish innings. But then you ran Lincecum out to the mound in the 7th. After an 8 pitch walk to Kahlil Greene, Lincecum was up to 117 pitches. And yet, no hook. In fact, Lincecum was left in for two more batters, finally leaving after surrendering a single to Tony Clark. In 6.3 innings, Lincecum finished with a total of 122 pitches. Let me tell you, as ligaments with inside information, this was not pleasant.

Mr. Manuel (I hope someday you’ll let us call you Cholly, like hard-workin’ ligament-guys), we are equally concerned with your decisions. Just the day before Mr. Bochy made his error with Lincecum, you made a similar mistake with Hamels in a game versus the Brewers. Your star on the mound had pitched well through seven innings, allowing three runs (all in the first inning), striking out 11 and walking just two. He reportedly asked to stay in the game for the eighth inning to face the thunderous heart of the Milwaukee order: Braun, Fielder, Hart. You, being a player-friendly manager, understood and probably even admired Hamels’ determination. But you must not let Cole sway you, for he knows not how he hurts us. He had already pitched 110 pitches through those seven innings. Nevertheless, clinging to a narrow 4-3 lead, you stuck with your ace for the 8th. In the next 11 pitches, Hamels not only lost the lead (after two hard hit drives to right center, one by Braun good for a double and the next by Fielder an oh-brother shot to the bleachers), but he also put unnecessary strain on the same elbow that cost him a month at the end of last season due to injury. As a part of that elbow, we can safely say that we are trying our best not to snap. We just need a little help.

So that’s why we’re asking you, as ligaments first and as fans second, to go easy on the young arms. Because while it is true that there are some pitchers out there with rubber arms who always seem to defy the medical odds, there is no way to know if Lincecum or Hamels is one of those pitchers without first crossing the point of no return. And sirs, there is no one who is less eager to find out than us.

Signed,
Ulnar Collateral Ligament of Cole Hamels
Ulnar Collateral Ligament of Tim Lincecum

Dear Pythagoras,

I know this is a little weird for me to be writing a letter to you, considering you’ve been dead now for about 2500 years. But there are some told-you-so moments that transcend time and the River Styx. You see, you came up with the Pythagorean Theorem, which related the three sides of a right triangle. It is elegant and logical, and it has proved extremely useful to mathematicians and scientists for centuries. Kudos, good sir. My time at Haverford College taught me to respect the classics.

More recently, though, Bill James hoped to come up with a formula that would relate a baseball team’s expected winning percentage to its runs scored and runs allowed over the course of a season. The idea was to create a predictor of success that was not based as much on luck as simple win/loss totals. His creation, the Pythagorean expectation, was named because it shared more than a passing resemblance to your timeless formula.

Last season, the Arizona Diamondbacks won the NL West and advanced all the way to the National League Championship Series. As the General Manager of the Diamondbacks, I’m very proud of what the players accomplished on the field. However, despite our strong starting pitching and lock-down bullpen, we were eliminated by the upstart Colorado Rockies. Many observers noted that we had a pedestrian 79-83 Pythagorean expectation, despite the fact that in the real world we won 90 games.

Well, this past offseason was no time to sit around counting my money (though I did receive an unparalleled 8 year contract. Suck on that, DePodesta). No, instead, I went out and I acquired the best pitcher available not named Johan Santana: Danny Haren. Not only that, but our core of young players, including Chris Young, Justin Upton, Mark Reynolds and Micah Owings is showing immense growth very quickly. Now, our team is built to last, but also built to roll through the playoffs. I don’t think anybody wants to face Webb and Haren twice in a series, even if they do have Matt Holliday’s aw-shucks smile and Troy Tulowitzki’s magic wand (I’m coming for you, Mr. O’Dowd, sir).

So, Pythagoras, I hate to bring this up with you, because it’s not really your fault. But Bill James is with the Red Sox now and I’m mad at Theo Epstein ’cause he won’t return my DVD copies of The Shield (the jerk), so you’re all I’ve got. Well, my team is 9-3 now, first in the NL West. And guess what? We’ve scored 77 runs and allowed just 45–good for a (you guessed it!) 9-3 Pythagorean expectation! Now, I’m not saying we’re going to win 122 games like we’re on pace to do, but I just got so fed up with people besmirching your good name.

Proportionately,
Josh Byrnes
Arizona Diamondbacks GM

This Monday missive first appeared on a Tuesday, due to an Opening Day-related mulligan being called yesterday. Apologies -Ed.

Dear Rich Harden,

Ever since your precocious 2004 performance, we have been drafting you in fantasy baseball. And while the price we have paid has ranged from early round bid to 23rd round flier, our motivation has always been the same. In 2004, you pitched 189.7 innings at a 3.99 ERA clip, and better yet, you notched 167 strikeouts. You even threw in 11 wins for our trouble. The 81 walks were a bit of a concern, but with the Big Three (no, not that one or even that one) in Zito, Mulder and Hudson in front of you, it looked like you had exactly the kind of low pressure situation that would allow you to blossom into an ace.

Going into 2005, expectations could not have been higher. We nervously edged you up our draft crib sheets and chomped at the bit as the selection came to us with your name still on the board. Some of us spurted out exuberantly things like, “$25!” or “$30!” in the heat of our auctions. But somehow, some way, we signed you to our modest roster and ran you out there like the ace we knew you would be. And 2005 was, in some ways, a success. Your 2.53 ERA was remarkable, and you improved your strikeout to walk ratio to almost 3. You allowed just 93 hits, albeit in 128 innings, striking out nearly a batter a frame. But this was the first real taste we got of your injury woes. By mid-May, you were on the DL with an oblique injury, sidelined for over a month. When you came back, you were still your old self, and we forgave you the bump in the road–everybody gets a little banged up. Sure, we could have used you down the stretch to shore up our ERA or pad our leads in strikeouts, but we understood when you had to go back on the DL in August and September with shoulder problems. We knew what other owners didn’t–that all along, you were a fantasy stud in the making, a bona fide ace that threw fantasy league championships around like rice at a wedding. We would come calling next year, when we were sure you’d be ready to make it up to us.

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Dear Cecil Cooper,

You have a difficult job. You stepped in as the interim manager of the struggling Astros in the middle of last season. Though it was hardly your fault, the team finished with its first losing season in almost a decade. The Astros offense was buoyed by a strong season from Carlos Lee, a solid–if down–year from Lance Berkman, and the emergence of rookie Swiss Army Knife Hunter Pence. With Ed Wade’s addition of Miguel Tejada, the Astros have both solidified a solid offensive core and announced their intentions to try to win now in a weak NL Central.

No, sir, your problem does not lie in any bat. The problem is the run prevention, not the run scoring. In the rotation, behind Roy Oswalt, your team has more retreads than the shoulder of Interstate 10. And, like it or not, they aren’t going to be getting bailed out by the defense. In fact, your infield defense is one of the most sieve-like in all of baseball. The mere replacement of Adam Everett with Tejada makes an enormous impact on your team’s ability to turn batted balls into outs. And while Kaz Matsui is probably a defensive improvement over the Craig Biggio/Chris Burke timeshare at second, he’ll have to cover for some of Berkman’s mistakes at first as well. Many have talked about moving Tejada to third in attempt to keep his bat worthwhile as his defense declines, but the position is taken by Ty Wigginton. What’s a manager to do?

Well, Mr. Cooper, I sympathize with your position. And not only that, I’ve got an idea that I think might help you. It’s going to sound crazy, but I assure it’s not any crazier than trying to win now with this team. And, let’s be honest, if that’s the mandate from Mr. Wade, you’re going to need at least some crazy ideas.

So here goes: move Tejada to third, Wigginton to second and Matsui to short.

The word from spring training is that Tejada looks more and more like a liability at short every day. Sure it was in 2004 that Matsui last played shortstop, but he held his own, adding +6 runs above average (according to Baseball Prospectus’s RAA stat) to the Mets defense that year. Even with the time it would take to readjust, I think that’s a big improvement over Tejada. Moving Wigginton to second may seem dicier, but consider this. As a third baseman over the last two years, he has been worth 8 runs below average in 114 games. In the 82 games he played at second base with the then-Devil Rays over the same period, he rated a total of 4 runs below average. If nothing else, Wigginton is no worse at second than he is at third, and considering second is the harder of the two positions, it seems wise to move him across the infield. And while other defensive metrics show a slightly different picture (David Pinto’s PMR rates him below average at both positions, but worse at second, whereas UZR rates him as near-average at second but awful at third), any losses would likely be made up by playing Tejada at third, where he could be an above-average defender.

Tejada, of course, may be the sticking point. He has been a shortstop his entire career, and he will be reluctant to give that up. But perhaps there is hope: his childhood idol growing up in the Dominican Republic was another great shortstop who moved to the hot corner as his glove declined: Cal Ripken, Jr. Tejada’s last three years at shortstop: +2, -5, -15 RAA. Tejada simply is no longer the flashy fielder he was when he was an Athletic.

Mr. Cooper, you may balk at switching the position of three different players during spring training. But with all the question marks filling out your rotation, if you want any chance to win this season you need to have the best defensive alignment possible on the field at all times. Your outfield defense is something to be proud of, but they can’t knock down ground balls up the middle.

Defensively,
Tommy

Note: This is the first in Breaking Balls’ new series, Monday Missives. These pieces will be posted on Mondays and will be written as an open letter. Let us know what you think of the addition.

Dear Los Angeles Dodgers,

I understand that baseball in Los Angeles has been somewhat of a rocky affair. You should be recognized for avoiding the nomenclatural excesses of your crosstown competitors. Even as you indulge in some of California’s gratification culture, you always seem to do it with a touch of old baseball class. Sure, Walter O’Malley may have ruined baseball for a generation of Brooklynites, but the rest of history has gone on to forgive him. Dodger Stadium is a baseball landmark, and despite the deep scar on your history that no amount of Botox can cover, you have regenerated organically around it, creating an American identity that spans both coasts. You broke the color barrier so you could put the best team on the field, and your team name has the best provenance of any in baseball.

So it is with a heavy heart that I write to you today. Your ongoing flirtation with moving your spring training facilities to Glendale, Arizona strikes me as shortsighted. When your franchise, then still in Brooklyn, opened spring training facilities in Vero Beach, Florida in 1948, you were one of the first clubs to do so. You created an annual tradition that marks the passing of the seasons as much as Punxsutawney Phil or the vernal equinox. No, sirs, in 1948 Branch Rickey took a decommissioned military base and created a part of American culture. You should be proud of that history.

By choosing Florida, you guaranteed an ongoing relationship with the former New Yorkers and New York fans who came to live there. People who might never have been able to make the trek to Ebbets Field flocked instead to Dodgertown. Although it only has a capacity of 6,500, the history of the stadium gives it a grander scale. The dugouts are literally dug out of the ground. Walking around the stadium, it’s a good bet you’ll catch sight of Tommy Lasorda or Sandy Koufax. For sixty years now, Dodger fans have come to Florida to relax, slow down, and perhaps exorcise the demons of 1958.

When Craig Callan, your vice president for spring training and minor league facilities, told USA Today in 2007 that you have “had a great relationship with Vero Beach for 50 or 60 years, but nothing’s forever. It’s a business decision,” you were simply playing out events that we have seen before, and to which we know the conclusion. Time heals all wounds, and eventually you will come to love Glendale just as you love Los Angeles. But you must ask yourselves why you feel you must do this thing. Why, of all teams, is it again the Dodgers who vacate their historic home?

This season marks the 60th anniversary of Dodgertown, and the 50th anniversary of the most famous relocation in the history of professional sports. Should you really commemorate that legacy by retiring the best baseball stadium in Florida? What would Branch Rickey say?

Feeling blue,
Tommy