Notes, quotes and comment

I came into the ALCS not really caring which team advanced to the World Series. In my mind:

• the Red Sox and Astros are the two best teams in baseball;
• the Red Sox fan base has become essentially insufferable;
• the Astros management burned away its good will with its hypocritical trade for accused woman-beater Roberto Osuna. "Zero tolerance," my left nostril.

The pleasure I felt when Osuna gave up a grand slam to Jackie Bradley Jr. on Tuesday settled matters. Go Red Sox.

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The garish "home run sculpture" in Marlins Park is, somehow, to be moved out of the stadium.

Considering the difficulties in doing so -- it is seven stories high, connected to plumbing and hydraulics and exists to fill a Miami-Dade County requirement for art in public buildings -- I would probably have left it in place.

I can agree with Derek Jeter on the aesthetics of the thing. But it's not the ugliest thing playing in that ballpark since Jeter's consortium bought the team and sold off a brilliant outfield.

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Manny Machado is a marvelously talented player. He has also in this series repeatedly jogged on ground balls, twice made questionable slides into second (and was called on it once) and, on Tuesday, took a cheap leg-whip shot at Milwaukee's first baseman.

Counsell on if Manny Machado has gone beyond the bounds of playing hard: “I don’t think he’s playing all that hard,” Counsell said.

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) October 17, 2018

Notes, quotes and comment

Thumping on the White Sox -- possessors of the second-worst record in the majors -- is what a team with playoff aspirations should be doing.

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Joe Nathan is going to "retire as a Twin" today Friday. The former bullpen ace never found a new team after the Nationals cut him loose early in the season. He's pushing 43 now and has had two Tommy John surgeries.

I will always respect the stars who try to milk one more year out of their talent, who will play until nobody will give them a uniform even if they are no longer what they once were. That's Nathan right now. He was great a decade ago for the Twins, and I will remember him as one of the best relievers in the game long after I forget his late career wanderings from team to team looking for one more opportunity to pitch.

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If the season ended today, the Twins would be in the playoffs. (And so would each of their minor league affilates, from Triple A to Rookie ball.

There are pros and cons to having all the minor league teams continuing to play. The advantages would include the so-called "culture of winning," which is rather undefinable, and having the continued opportunity to send an injured player on a quick rehab assignment. Also, the owners and managements of minor league affilates like winning and appreciate being with a major league organization that frequently gets them into the playoffs.

But it also makes it a bit touchier to make mass callups for the Sept. 1 roster expansion.

The priority isn't getting Rochester the International League title; it's getting the major league team a wild card berth. But one doesn't want to undermine the affiliates unnecessarily.

Example: With Jason Castro sidelined still by his concussion, the Twins have no reason to feel guilty about having Mitch Garver on their active roster. Cory Provus, the radio play-by-play guy, speculated last night that Anthony Recker, the catcher acquired last month as a throw-in when the Twins traded for Jamie Garcia, might be called up as insurance behind Garver and Chris Gimenez.

Probably won't happen, in part because the Twins would have to open a 40-man roster spot for Recker, in part because they don't need to use him at the major league level at this point, and in part because that would create a roster issue for Rochester -- and promoting a catcher to take Recker's space would have the same effect down the chain.

It's a good problem to have.

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One guy who won't be called up or pitch in the minor league postseason is primo pitching prospect Fernando Romero. Romero has been shut down at Double A Chattanooga after a difficult August (8.38 ERA for the month). He's thrown 125 innings this season after working 102.1 the past two seaons combined because of injuries, including Tommy John surgery.

He's on the 40, so a call-up was to be expected. But he's pretty clearly gassed.

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The Twins this week named four prospects to the Arizona Fall League roster: pitchers Tyler Jay and Tom Hackimer (both relievers), outfielder LaMonte Wade and multi-position guy Chris Paul. Paul and Jay missed considerable time this year with injuries, so the AFL gives them a chance to catch up on innings and at-bats respectively.

They have two roster spots yet to fill. Who gets tabbed may depend on injury status.

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The Houston Astros have been cleared to play in their home city again this weekend, so presumably Minute Maid Park and its supporting services and infrastructure are good to go, or at least will be by Saturday. That's a good sign as the Houston area deals with the aftermath of Harvey.

A serious test for the commissioner

Rob Manfred has an interesting political dilemma ahead of him.

Late last week, Chris Correa, former scouting director of the St. Louis Cardinals, pleaded guilty in federal court to repeatedly hacking into the Houston Astros' central data base. Among the information he downloaded: scouting reports and priority lists of potential draftees during the 2013 draft and data on trade possibilities as the midseason trade deadline approached.

Correa has been fired by the Cardinals, but the computer break-ins were estimated by prosecutors to have cost the Astros about $1.7 million and gave the Cardinals a competitive advantage during the draft.

And now Manfred has to decide how to punish the Cardinals. Even if Correa's supervisors didn't know what he was doing, the team still benefited.

Manfred is doubtless fine the Cardinals the maximum $2 million, but while that's a lot of money to me or you it's an amount teams frequently write off when they discard a player. To send a serious message to everybody else about such an serious breach of ethics, he's got to strip the Cardinals of serious draft picks.

And what makes this an intriguing political dilemma is that Bill DeWitt, the lead owner of the Cardinals, was one of Manfred's biggest champions in his selection as Bud Selig's successor. Historically, commissioners who are attentive to the owners who backed them last in the office; commissioners who make a point of demonstrating their independence lose their jobs fairly rapidly.

Manfred can't afford to alienate DeWitt. He also can't afford to let DeWitt's team off lightly.

The "Ground Control" hack

The big news in baseball Tuesday was the revelation that the feds are focused on the St. Louis Cardinals front office as the culprits in last year's invasion of the Houston Astros' baseball ops database.

You may recall that last summer, almost a year ago, there was a brief sensation when the website Deadspin posted a variety of internal Astros communications about potential trades and player evaluations,That led to the FBI investigation, which has apparently (per Yahoo) led them to a house in Jupiter, Fla., used by Cardinals officials during spring training.

I really don't know what to make of this. Oh, it's easy enough for me to believe the Cardinals would commit industrial espionage. Tony LaRussa no longer works there, but his spirit still permeates the organization, and that spirit is every bit as controlling-to-the-point-of-paranoia as that of Bill Belichick. If the Astros were as lax on security for "Ground Control" as reports indicate, sure, the Cards would take advantage.

But in that case, why would any of their informational loot wind up on an Internet bulletin board to tip off the world that the Astros proprietary information was readily accessible? That makes no sense,

I rather expect the feds to make the Cardinals an example for the rest of the nation. Just because you can break into a competitor's computer system doesn't make it a good idea. This might be small beans as industrial espionage goes, but it involves a high-profile business, so it's a good one to use as a general warning.

The Brady Aiken fiasco revisited

You may remember that last summer there was a brief storm of controversy when the Houston Astros backed out of at least two, maybe three, contract agreements with draftees Brady Aiken (the No. 1 overall pick), Jacob Nix (fifth-round pick) and Mac Marshall (21st round pick).

The Astros insisted the pre-signing physical on Aiken uncovered something wrong in his elbow. Aiken and his advisors are equally adamant that there was nothing significant. The Astros slashed there offer to Aiken -- a move that, had the prep lefty accepted it, would have allowed the team enough leeway in ther draft bonus allotment to sign both Nix and Marshall to overslot deals.

Aiken didn't sign for any amount -- in the final minutes before the deadline the Astros reportedly tried to raise their lowball offer and were simply ignored -- and the Astros didn't sign Nix or Marshall either, because losing Aiken deproved them of the majority of their bonus pool.

Most of the scorn heaped on the Astros was over their reneging on the offer to Nix, who passed his physical. I am, personally, skeptical that the Astros dealt in good faith with these high-schoolers, but that's just my opinion.

On Monday it was reported that the Astros settled with Nix for an unknown figure. Presumably they were afraid the arbitrator in the grievance filed by the players union would determine that they had a valid contract with Nix, and they would be heavily penalized in the coming draft as a result of exceeding their bonus pool.

The Astros get the No. 2 pick in this year's draft as a result of not signing the No. 1 pick last year. Unsigned draftees cannot be drafted again by the same club without their permission; I would expect that there was enough bad blood from last summer's "negotiations" that none of the three will give the Astros that waiver.

The Astros' 1/1 problems

Carlos Correa, seen here hitting for the Quad Cities
River Bandits against the Cedar Rapids Kernels in 2013,
is currently shelved with a fractured leg.

The Houston Astros have had the first overall pick in each of the last three drafts. With the spectacular collapse of their negotiations with this year's 1/1 as the team indulged in apparent gamesmanship with its draft pool, it's worth looking at how they've fared with those picks so far.

2012: Carlos Correa.

This was a gamesmanship draft by the Astros. Correa wasn't expected to go that high; the consensus had Byron Buxton as the top talent and three college pitchers (Mark Appel, Kyle Zimmer and Kevin Gausman) as safer selections.

The Astros took Correa and signed him for considerably less than the Twins, who picked second, spent on Buxton. They then used their bonus pools savings to buy a pair of "tough signs," Lance McCullers Jr. and Rio Ruiz, out of their college commitments.

Two years later, Correa is a highly regarded prospect, albeit out for the remainder of the season with a fractured fibia near the right ankle. He's not as highly regarded as Buxton, however, and if the broken leg helps force him from shortstop to third base, his value will recede a bit more.

As for the gain downdraft, it's probable that the Twins did better with Jose Barrios than the Astros did with McCullers Jr.

Correa wasn't a bad selection by the Astros, but I think the industry would agree they'd have been better off taking Buxton.

2013: Mark Appel

When the Astros and Twins bypassed Appel in 2012, so did several other teams, and he slid to the Pirates at No. 8. Pittsburgh didn't have the bonus pool money to appease the college junior, and Appel returned to Stanford.

This time the Astros took him (over Jonathan Gray and Kris Bryant), and Appel signed.

He has been a disaster.

Appel was somewhat less than dominant for Quad Cities in the Midwest League last summer, but it had been a long collegiate season and he was shifting from pitching once a week for Stanford to a more frequent professional rotation. Nobody was concerned.

Moved up to high A Lancaster in the California League this year, Appel is 1-5, 10.80. Let me repeat that ERA: Ten-eighty. He's averaging a bit more than three innings a start, and he's allowed 69 hits in 38.1 innings.

Lancaster is a notoriously terrible place to pitch, but there is no sugarcoating those numbers. The Astros would have done better to take Bryant, certainly. At this point, they'd have done better taking anybody else. It's difficult to envision a four-year college pitcher doing this poorly in A ball and having a career.

2014: Brady Aiken.

Appel may not be what the Astros (and, to be fair, most everybody else) expected, but at least there's a chance he will contribute someday to the Astros. Aiken will assuredly not.

Whatever the specifics of the medical concerns, whatever the perceived risk, it is baffling that the Astros front office screwed up the negotiations this badly. And, of course, it wasn't just Aiken they lost, but Jacob Nix as well. I doubt that general manager Jeff Luhnow is in any real jeopardy over this, but there is a serious case to be made that this should a firing offense.

Houston will get the No. 2 pick next June in compensation for failing to sign Aiken. The Astros don't deserve it.

The Brady Aiken fiasco

The current regime of the Houston Astros has a tendency to come off as convinced that they're the smartest guys in the room -- and more than that, they frequently seem compelled to make sure everybody else knows it.

Today, with the first overall pick in the draft lost to them -- and their fifth round pick too, and, although this is perhaps a bit more of a stretch, their 21st round pick -- they look considerably dumber than that.

The Astros on Friday lost two prime prospects, maybe a third, in a dispute over a medical evaluation and, depending on which offer we're talking about, $3 million to $1.5 million. Now, $3 million is a life-changing sum for most of us, but teams toss that much money overboard routinely these days. The Red Sox dumped A.J. Pierzynski last week; they will pay him more than $3 million not to play for them.

The Astros, if we take their reported concerns about Brady Aiken's elbow at face value (and Aiken and his camp emphatically do not), were willing to risk more than $3 million on Aiken, even $5 million,  but not the agreed-upon $6.5 million. This flabbergasts me. 

Five million is the same amount the Twins are wasting on Mike Pelfrey this year -- and will spend again on him next year. The Astros couldn't bring themselves to wager less money on Aiken's future than the Twins did on Pelfrey.

Dumb, dumb, dumb. 

Linking up

Major league play resumes today after a four-day All-Star break. Here are a few links that might inform and/or entertain you in the meantime.

* I had my (usually) biweekly chat with KMSU's Jim Gullickson on Monday. It was actually the first time I'd been on the air in three weeks, but we'll get back in rhythm now. Second and fourth Mondays of the month, 1 p.m.

* Here's a lovely piece by the great Joe Posnanski on Glen Perkins and his All-Star experience this year.

Then the truck turned onto 7th and it stopped, and there were a lot of people there, thousands of people, and the cheers pushed up to 11, pushed to a sound Glen had heard before -- the sound he had heard for Mariano Rivera. Only this time those cheers were for him. Surreal.

Read it.

* Today is also the deadline for signing 2014 draft picks, and there is a bizarre late drama coming to a head between the Houston Astros and the No. 1 overall pick, Brady Aiken. To understand it, here's Ken Rosenthal's piece from earlier in the week that exposed the dispute to public view, and here's a Fangraphs piece that tries to make sense of it.

I have an opinion about this one, but it's really more of a bias. I have, with no real evidence to support it, a sense that the Astros are not a trustworthy operation. I don't know that they're trying to cheat Aiken; as Mike Pietriello says in the second piece I linked to above, cheating Aiken doesn't make any logical sense. I just don't trust them.

But I do think the Astros will sign Aiken today, and Jacob Nix, the fifth-round pick whose contract agreement is in limbo because of this dispute, as well. I can't see that the Astros are dumb enough to lose both players. And if this thing goes completely haywire, it's possible that the 'Stros will not only lose Aiken but their first-round pick next year (if Nix is ruled to have a valid oral contract at a number that pushes the Astros over their bonus allotment). There's too much at risk for the Astros; they have to sign these guys.

But they sure seem to be trying to screw this up.

Pic of the Week

Houston second baseman Jake Elmore, left,
and right fielder Jimmy Paredes collide on what should
have been the final out Friday.

Bases loaded, two out, bottom of the ninth, Houston clinging to a one-run lead in Pittsburgh, and the Pirates' Russell Martin pops up to short right field.

Jake Elmore settles under the ball, but right fielder Jimmy Paredes is having none of that. He runs into Elmore, the ball drops, two runs score and the Astros lose.

It was the second time last week that Paredes ran into his second baseman. Jose Altuve — arguably the only Astro who deserves to be a major league regular — suffered a partial dislocation of his right jaw in Monday's collision, which is why Elmore was there to be Paredes' target Friday.

The Astros had the majors' worst record each of the past two seasons, and they entered today 12-31.

This is, astoundingly (astroundingly?), not the worst record in baseball — the Miami Marlins are 11-32 — but the Astros are certainly a bad team. And if Paredes keeps playing right field like this, a dangerous one — for their second basemen.

Big picture stuff

Jim Crane, approved Thursday as the new owner of the
Houston Astros, got a sizable discount on the purchase
price for agreeing to move to the AL West from the
NL Central.

The baseball news of Thursday included some groundbreaking stuff:

• The Houston Astros will move from the National League to the American League. This will result in two leagues of 15 teams each and five teams per division. It will also result in year-round interleague play.
• The playoff field will be expanded to five teams per league, with a one-game playoff between the wild card teams.
• And a report, at this point not confirmed publicly by either side, that a new collective bargaining agreement has been reached between the players union and the owners. Details expected on Monday.

Taking the last one first: The NFL had a lockout this past spring and summer that threatened the season. The NBA is has its lockout and appears unlikely to have a season. Baseball's labor situation is peaceful. A bit contentious, sure, but peaceful. Why is baseball different today?

Because of 1994. The NFL and NBA sought to break their unions (and succeeded, as did the NHL about eight years ago). Baseball tried in 1994 to break the MLBPA, and failed. The players had the nerve to pick the timing of the work action and picked the time when they had leverage -- in midseason. In the other leagues, it was the owners who decided when and how the disputes would escalate -- in the offseason, after the championships were decided.

The 1994 strike damaged the game financially for a few years, and it scarred both sides badly enough that nobody involved wants to see it happen again, but baseball has largely recovered from the damage. As long as there's sufficient institutional memory, it won't happen again.

Baseball is our only major sport without a "salary cap." It also seems to be doing quite well financially.

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On to the Astros and wild cards and implications thereof:

This appears to be part of the labor deal. The players dislike the current uneven divisional set up (the AL West now has four teams, the NL Central has six), and it's blindly obvious that the current playoff field devalues winning a division championship.

LaVelle Neal of the StarTribune said in his blog (paywall, no link) that baseball has come up with solutions in search of a problem. I believe he is reacting rather than thinking.

Year-round interleague play? I'm not a fan of interleague play at any time -- I'd rather dump it altogether -- but that ship sailed long ago. Neal's complaint that interleague games in September will distort the pennant race is silly. A game in September is worth exactly as much in the standings as one in June. There's just less time left in which a trailing team can make up ground. I would think it less disruptive for an AL team with a regular DH to deal with taking him out of the lineup for one series every two months or so than to have to do it for a solid week.

LVN suspects the one-game playoff is intended to re-create annually the drama of the final day of the 2011 season. It's actually been on the table for more than a year; 2011 had nothing to do with it.

A one-game playoff between wild-card teams is preferable to a three-game series because of the schedule. A three-game series would force the division winners to sit around for the better part of a week. A one-gamer also emphatically underlines the purpose: To reward teams for winning their division.

Again, I'd prefer the old system, in which there was one pennant winner in the league who went straight to the World Series. That ended in the 1960s, and it ain't coming back.

This plan isn't perfect. It's better than what we've got.