Notes,quotes and comment

Tommy Milone took a one-hitter into the ninth inning Tuesday, He didn't get the shutout; he didn't even get through the ninth. But it was still undoubtedly the best start of his Twins tenure.

He's now had three decent starts in a row, although the previous two were six innings and five innings -- not exactly working deep into games. The radio guys were, of course, talking all through the middle innings about Milone's difficulties earlier in the season getting through the fourth and fifth innings. In his first six starts, he got through the fifth exactly once.

But in his most recent three starts he's pitched 19.1 innings with five earned runs -- a 2.32 ERA. His ERA has dropped from 6.23 to 4.71. That's not a good ERA, to be sure. But the Twins have given starts to nine different pitchers, and only Ervin Santana and Milone have ERAs under 5.

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In Minnesota, this was overshadowed by the firing of Terry Ryan, but a federal judge on Monday sentenced Christopher Correa, former scouting director of the St. Louis Cardinals, to 46 months in prison for repeatedly hacking into the Houston Astros' player evaluation data base.

Now we'll see how hard Commissioner Rob Manfred hits the Cardinals for this violation. Earlier this year Manfred stripped the Boston Red Sox of five prospects and banned them from signing any international free agents in the current signing period for violating the signing bonus rules. It was a pretty harsh penalty. I think that the Correa case is ethically worse than the Red Sox case, but that's just me.

However ... by hitting the Red Sox, Manfred was punishing an team whose owners were opposed to his elevation to the job. The Cardinals' principal owner was, in contrast, very much in favor of Manfred for commissioner.

It's easy enough to be hard on one's political opponents. Let's see how Manfrec handles his allies.

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Fun with small sample sizes: Cory Provus talked quite a bit during Tuesday's game about the Tigers' problems with outfield defense. Meanwhile, Max Kepler was charged with his third error in right field.

My sense of things is that the current Minnesota collection of outfielders is pretty good defensively, I wouldn't play Danny Santana in center as often as Paul Molitor does, but basically, the five outfielders (Byron Buxton, Robbie Grossman, Kepler, Eddie Rosario and Santana) all have at least marginal center field speed, with Grossman probably the slowest of the five.

Anyway ... I took a look early this morning at Kepler's defensive metrics as listed on Baseball Reference. He rates better in Total Zone than in Runs Saved in right field (366.2 innings), but above average in both.

But I had to smile at his centerfield ratings. He's had one start in center with three other appearances, a total of 21 innings. By Total Zone, he was slightly below average in those innings; by Runs Saved, he was awesome, on pace for 51 runs saved over the course of a season.

Twenty-one innings means nothing in an evaluative sense, of course, but that's a wide range of variation.

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.

Notes, quotes and comment

By coincidence, Sano Day -- the debut of Miguel Sano -- happened to be the opening of this year's international free-agent signings. The Twins, as was widely expected, announced an agreement with 16-year-old Dominican shortstop Wander Javier.

Wander Javier signing his $4.0MM deal with #Twins. http://t.co/uQVA8y0Err pic.twitter.com/KqFmCtkgvX

— DPL (@DPLBaseball) July 2, 2015

Four million dollars breaks Sano's team record for an international signing. It also exceeds the Twins international bonus pool allotment, and I would expect the club to trade for some pool money from an organization less involved in the chase for Dominican talent.

As for Javier: He's 16 years old, and nobody really knows what he's going to grow into. The Twins hope and expect he'll stick at shortstop and develop into a threat at the plate as well. But it's a long road for him and all the Dominican hopefuls.

It was six years ago that the Twins signed Sano and Jorge Polanco and Max Kepler as well. It was quite an international haul, and Bill Smith, whose reign as general manager has drawn no shortage of criticism, deserves credit for pushing into the Dominican morass. But as well as those three have performed in the minors, none have yet established themselves on the major league level. That's coming, to be sure, but it illustrates the necessary timeline.

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The St. Louis Cardinals confirmed Thursday that they have fired their scouting director, Chris Correa, apparently because he was involved in the hacking of the Houston Astros database.

Scouting director is, emphatically, not a low-level position. If Correa gained insights from his intrusion into the database about Houston's evaluation of specific players and-or their method of combining traditional scouting with statistical information, it has to be assumed that those insights were part of the conversation with other ranking St. Louis front office types, regardless of whether they knew of the hacking.

That the hack reached that level in the hierarchy makes it impossible for commissioner Rob Manfred to go lightly on the organization when it comes time to impose penalties.

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A more traditional form of front-office shakeup happened this week in Anaheim, where general manager Jerry DiPoto concluded that there wasn't room for him and manager Mike Scoscia. Owner Arte Moreno backed Scoscia, and DiPoto left.

There will be more defections from the Angels organization. That one of the reputed flashpoints between DiPoto and Scoscia was the use of analytics probably isn't going to help Moreno attract a new GM strong in the new wave of thinking.

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.

RIP, Oscar Taveras

Oscar Taveras crosses home plate
after a pinch-hit home run in the
NLCS on Oct. 12.

We'll never know how good he was going to be.

Oscar Taveras, a 22-year-old outfielder for the St. Louis Cardinals and long touted as one of the brightest prospects in baseball, died Sunday in an auto accident in his native Dominican Republic. Also dead in the crash was his 18-year-old girlfriend, Edilia Arvelo.

Oscar Taveras was gonna be a star. Everybody believed that. Taveras was Baseball America's No. 3 prospect going into the 2013 season, which was wrecked by an ankle injury that required surgery. He was No. 3 again going into the 2014 season, earned a quick call-up to the majors, struggled, was sent back to Triple A, mashed some more, came back to St. Louis ...

And, basically, never got going. By season's end, manager Mike Matheny was publicly questioning Taveras' work ethic and conditioning. Some observers outside the organization questioned Matheny's patience with the megaprospect. In Matheny's defense, he was in a pennant race, he gave the rookie almost 250 plate appearances, and the rookie didn't hit. Taveras was on the bench for the playoffs. He had three hits in seven pinch-hit appearances in the playoffs, including an important home run, but never got a start.

Still, the Cardinals were penciling Taveras in for the right field job next year. They were counting on him turning into a middle-of-the-order force. And now that won't happen.

"Tomorrow isn't promised to any of us," Kirby Puckett said when he announced his retirement in 1995. Taveras has had his final today, and we all have lost something.

Game 1: Sloppy defense and phantom calls

How not to turn the double play, by Pete Kozma.

It sure didn't take long for the St. Louis Cardinals to make my World Series prediction look silly.

St. Louis displayed the worst infield defense I've seen since the Twins dumped Tsuyoshi Nishioka. Just about everybody had a hand in it, or an iron glove:

• Shortstop Pete Kozma failed to catch the initial throw on what should have been an inning-ending double play. Despite the worst efforts of second-base ump Dana DeMuth, the Cards got nothing out of it. The Red Sox turned it into three runs.
• Pitcher Adam Wainwright and catcher Yadier Molina talked each other out of catching a routine popup. (In an awe-inspiring display of incompetence, the official scorer deemed it a single for Stephen Drew. Apparently the scorers have decided to ignore the part of the definition of error that says the play can be made "with ordinary effort." There was extraordinary lack of effort on Wainwright's part.)
• Third baseman David Freese displayed less range than Trevor Plouffe on an RBI single. The range of some third basemen is described as "a step and a dive." Freese had neither.
• Later in the game, Freese lollypopped a throw on a routine grounder. It bounced before reaching first baseman Matt Adams, and Adams channeled his inner Prince Fielder. Poor throw, worse scoop. Error goes to Freese, but Adams truly made the lesser play.

How not to catch a pop up, by
Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina.

I didn't notice second baseman Matt Carpenter bollix a play, but there's time.

To make a weak defense of my prediction (which would still be stronger than the Cardinals' defense), it was based on the notion that the Cardinals pitching would handle the Red Sox hitters. Wainwright was more effective than his line (five innings, three earned runs). But one of the misplays was his own fault, and of course Carlos Beltran saved him a lot of runs with his catch off David Ortiz.

Most of the attention has gone to the first Kozma error (he was charged with another) because DeMuth blew the initial call, which the rest of the umpiring crew overturned. It is my belief – which I voiced last night on Twitter — that underlying the bad call is the reflexive habit of giving the pivotman credit for the out at second base. Umpires routinely rule that an infielder dropped the ball during the transfer. Ball hits glove, catch is made — that's the way umps call it, and that's why DeMuth ruled the way he did.

Ball-hits-glove-equals-catch is the way umps make the call at first base, but the first baseman at least has to hang on to the ball. The middle infielder trying to turn two is hurrying not only to get a throw off, but to avoid the oncoming baserunner as well. This phantom call, much like that of the "neighborhood play," may be an umpiring concession to player safety.

It's understandable. But that doesn't mean I like it.

A quick World Series prediction

Fenway Park is gussied up for the World Series, which
open there tonight.

I don't particularly like either of the teams playing in the World Series this year. I don't have a rooting interest in this matchup.

But I recognize this: The best teams in their respective leagues are playing for the championship. That doesn't happen every year. It didn't happen every year when there were just two divisions per league — the 1987 Twins are testimony to that fact — and it has rarely happened in the wild card era.

So kudos to the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals. Despite the pitfalls built by Commissioner Bud at the behest of TV to create artifical suspense, they got to the showcase.

So who wins? I think St. Louis does.

I'll boil it down to this simple matchup: The Detroit Tigers starters demonstrated in the previous round that power arms overmatch much of the Red Sox lineup. The Cardinals have some power arms in their rotation. Unlike the Tigers, the Cardinals have power arms in the bullpen to boot. The Sox survived the Tigers series by outlasting the Detroit starters and preying on the Detroit relievers. That isn't likely to work against the Cardinals.

The conventional wisdom has this being an evenly-matched series that will go seven games. Maybe it will. But I think it might be over in St. Louis.

Contemplating Tony LaRussa

A World Series trophy? For me? 

The St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series Friday night, winning the most routine game of what had been an intriguingly dramatic series.

This makes three World Series titles for Tony LaRussa, who is increasingly making a case for the title of greatest manager ever.

There's no clear and obvious way to determine such a title, but but he's a serious contender. As I've said before, I don't like his persona, but I can't argue with his results.

One intriguing aspect of his career: He has had, by my reckoning, six teams that could legitimately be said to be the best team in baseball that year -- the 1993 White Sox, the A's of 1988-90, the Cardinals of 2004-05. Only one of those teams (the 1989 Athletics) won the World Series. Two of his titles, including this one, came with squads that were less than the best.

Of course, the wider net cast for postseason teams in the current set up makes it almost inevitable that the best team doesn't win. John McGraw, Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel -- those men had to have the best record in the league to get to the World Series. LaRussa doesn't.

In both 2006 and 2011, LaRussa -- the father of the modern bullpen of specialists and rigid closers -- had to get resourceful with the relief crew. The Cardinals this year went through five different closers, and eight different pitchers picked up saves. Three of the men in his postseason 'pen were midseason acquisitions (Octavio Dotel, Arthur Rhodes and Marc Rzepczynski); another (Jake Westbrook) was a transplanted starter.  All through the postseason, as Jason Motte continued to get the ball for the final outs, LaRussa kept insisting that Motte wasn't the closer, that there was no closer.

That was just one of the challenges for LaRussa this season. Remember:

• Adam Wainwright, arguably his best starter (and the man who he turned into his October closer in 2006) went down for the year during spring training, opening a giant hole in the rotation. 
• LaRussa was troubled by a severe case of shingles from practically the start of the year and was forced by his bosses to take a leave of absence in May. He is still on medication for the ailment.
• Dave Duncan, his long-time pitching coach and confidant, had a long leave himself to tend to his severely ill wife.

The Cardinals were not the best team in baseball in 2011. But LaRussa led them to the title anyway. It was, perhaps, the most impressive accomplishment of an impressive managerial career.

The value of postseason games

One recurring argument in the seemingly unending debate over public subsidies of professional sports is if they have any real financial benefit to the hosting city/county.

Hosting the World Series has been a blessing
for St. Louis' city budget.

There is little doubt that the games trigger economic activity; the question is if that activity would occur anyway, just in a different direction, without the games.

On Friday we had a minor data point: The mayor of St. Louis dropped his plan for mandatory furloughs for city workers because the Cardinals had made the World Series. The seven postseason games played so far in the Gateway City brought in an unanticipated $2 million in sales tax revenue; should the Series go the full seven games, the city stands to pull in another $900,000. The furloughs would have saved the city some $2.7 million.

As the linked-to item from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch makes clear, there are city officials who didn't think the furloughs were ever necessary, but that's not the point here. The point is that St. Louis has gotten $2 million in revenue from seven games -- revenue it didn't expect because it didn't expect the games to be played. Nobody seems to be disputing that assessment.

Now, I wouldn't assume that the math (one game = $285,000 in tax receipts) would hold true for the regular season. Postseason tickets are pricier than regular season tickets, for one thing, and it's likely that fan enthusiasm brings more memorabilia sales as well. And extrapolating this to the Twins is dicey as well; I have no idea how Missouri/St. Louis sales taxes compare to Minnesota/Minneapolis.

But if we cut the per-game tax receipts to a third, we get about $95,000 per game. Multiply that by 81 (the number of regular season home games) and we get a bit less than $7.7 million a year in added public revenue.

Does that justify hundreds of millions in public investment in a stadium? Not by itself. But it doesn't hurt.