The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball Blog

From the Albany Times Union:

The Times Union has learned that investigators in the year-old case, which has been kept quiet until now, uncovered evidence that testosterone and other performance-enhancing drugs may have been fraudulently prescribed over the Internet to current and former Major League Baseball players, National Football League players, college athletes, high school coaches, and a former Mr. Olympia champion and another top contender in the bodybuilding competition.

The customers include Los Angeles Angels center fielder Gary Matthews Jr., according to sources with knowledge of the investigation.

The interesting thing I wrote about a little at USSM is that his career year in 2006 was a lot of luck: hits dropping in. But Matthews really became a useful regular in 2004, in Texas, when his power spiked and stayed there. Normally, you’d think of it as a park effect, but 30 points of ISO is curious. I’d have to go calculate it out, but it’s larger than I’d expect from Arlington.

In any event, it would, if it proves out, show one of the more interesting things about steroids we’ve seen: that for hitters, it’s often the marginal players trying to fight for starting jobs that get into use, rather than established regulars. For Matthews, if it turns out that his 2004 resurgence, which still didn’t make him a star but at least put him in a position to get playing time to get lucky and land a $50m contract, it’ll demonstrate in quite real terms what the potential payout for drug use by marginal players is. A guy being passed around on waivers not that long ago, Matthews was looking at making possibly $1-2m/year while competing for jobs in spring training each year.

Instead, even if he’s so bad that he never gets another contract, he’ll have made vastly more, at the cost of the health risks.

In the book, I mention Hal Chase’s abominable reputation for cheating, both while he was an active player and afterwards. I don’t dwell on it there, but Chase was the most corrupt player I’ve come across. What’s interesting and appalling, though, is that while Chase was active, while everyone knew, no one really went after him. It’s a testament to how corrupt and how tolerated that kind of thing was that you can’t find contemporary outrage, calls for his banning, columns constantly attacking him when he came to town, even though the writers knew as well as people in baseball what he was made of.

But as the Black Sox scandal unravelled (and Hal Fullerton entirely vindicated for his coverage after the 1919 series), you can start to see that scandals are more easily aired. For instance, I came across this throwaway mention in the February 10, 1921 Sporting News:

The divorced wife of Hal Chase might make a good witness in the trials of the accused White Sox. In testifying for her divorce in Cincinnati recently she swore Chase told her a lot about how he had been mixed up in baseball cheating. She “knew his nature,” she said and her knowledge led her to believe that when there was any crooked work being done Chase was in on it.

Now, it required something to be out there for them to point to, but it’s also clear reading this that the Sporting News isn’t dismissing her allegations and in fact wants people to look into them.

This is a huge change from 1919. Then, reporters like Hugh Fullerton who wrote about the Series or the aftermath were mocked and savaged by voices of establishment publications. Baseball Magazine, for instance, took many opportunities to fire at Fullerton. Eight Men Out quotes them at one point taking a story about Lee Magee, thrown out of baseball for his connection to Hal Chase rumors (Magee also finished 1919 on the White Sox but was not in on the fixing, it seems):

Magee, after all, has not hurt the game in which he will no longer have a part. The greater harm was done by sensational writers like Hugh Fullerton, men for whose actions there was not the slightest excuse.

But only a year later, the Sporting News openly encouraged investigation of the man Magee was thrown out for associating with.

I love it when research intersects. In the book, Sutton’s reputation as a cheater is covered, but I didn’t really get into umpires with particularly short fuses, and ones known for being quick to eject, or who will carry a grudge.

So. Umpire Bruce Froemming was both, and when he crossed Sutton. From Baseball Digest:

Don Sutton was pitching a shutout in Chicago when Froemming saw him scuff th eball on the pitching rubber.
“We caught him,” Froemming said. “Dick Stello asked for the ball at third base, and Sutton threw the ball so hard that Stello had to move and the ball hit into the brick wall. Now we can’t catch the scuff.”
When Froemming went to ask him what was going on, Sutton screamed at Froemming.
He was gone and there was nothing that could save him,” Froemming recalled.

That’s some quality quick thinking on Sutton’s part, even if it’s the wrong thing to do.

from “Here’s the Quickest Way to Be Ejected from a Game” by Bob Hertzel, 1986

I’m a sucker for jokes that require the other target to think about them before they get angry.

Larry Bowa made much of his reputation as a hard-nosed player from his expertise as a bench jockey. I found this in Baseball Digest, where he hassles Cincy shortstop Dave Concepcion.

“Elmer, yeah you, Emler.
“Me?”
“Elmer, isn’t your name Elmer? Every time I look at Reds box score I see E Concepcion. I thought the E stood for Elmer.”

In fourth game of the 1941 World Series, the Dodgers led the Yankees 4-3 in the ninth. Hugh Casey was pitching and with two outs and a three-and-two count on Tommy Heinrich, threw a spitball that Henrich swung on and missed, but got away from the catcher Mickey Owen. Heinrich made it to first.

Maybe Heinrich would have walked anyway, and what happens next didn’t require the spitball – but the Yankees then scored four runs to win, 7-4.

The interesting thing to me is that Casey would go to the spitball, knowing that it might be difficult to control and to catch, with a 3-2 count, two outs, and no one on. Clearly, weighing the risk/reward, he didn’t want to challenge Heinrich and risk a game-tying home run, so he’s trying to get a swing-and-miss to end the game and even the series at 2-2. But that Casey in such an important situation would choose to throw the spitter reveals that he thought it was the best pitch he could strike Heinrich out with.

Here’s a great article “by Ty Cobb”, written in Baseball Magazine in 1916 from an interview, on “Daring Feats that Have Made the Tigers Dreaded, and How They Were Thought Out and Executed, as Revealed in an Interview”.

I used to figure out dozens of these plays. They are all based on the so-called science of probabilities. Very often they would fail, but that isn’t the point. A certain percentage of them are bound to fail. Those that succeed are the ones that count. And even those that fail have their uses. They show the opposition that they can never know what to expect. You simply cannot prepare for the unexpected. Such a situation leaves a feeling of unrest in the defense. They are momentarily helpless. It is plays such as these which do more to demoralize a defense than a home run with men on bases.

His tales of stretching a hit and coordinated baserunning are awesome.

Check it out.

In the first rule changes since 1996! Glory be!

There are large changes to scoring rules, including how plays are defined.

Ball doctoring:
- implemented a rule that a position player who scuffs or defaces a ball is ejected and receives an automatic 10-game suspension
- aaand, as the story puts it

The same Rule 3.02 now specifically prohibits placing “soil, rosin, paraffin, licorice, sandpaper, emery paper or other foreign substance” on the ball. The rule’s penalty phase dictates, “The umpire shall demand the ball and remove the offender from the game. In addition, the offender shall be suspended automatically for 10 games.”

This is particularly interesting. I see this as a reaction to the Kenny Rogers World Series incident, where Rogers appeared to have something on his hand during the first inning.

Moreover, though, I wonder if there’s a perception within baseball that there’s a lot more of this going on than we know out in the general public. Baseball hasn’t changed the rules that attempt to prevent ball doctoring in ages. Why now? While position players have traditionally been accomplices in scuffing or doctoring, was there some reason that the rules committee needed to make a change? Doctoring on the whole is way down from its heyday — there isn’t any pitcher operating today for whom an illegal pitch is a primary part of their arsenal.

There are some “pace” rules, which will almost certainly be ignored
- the totally unenforced “time to deliver a pitch” when no one’s on base is now only 12 seconds. Penalty is a called ball.
- batters are supposed to keep at least one foot in the box the whole at bat, with certain exceptions

Baseball’s tried this before, and it doesn’t work. Umpires don’t want to time the game with a stopwatch, and they don’t want to affect the game outcome over things like this. How many times did Steve Trachsel ever get a ball called for violating the 20-second rule?

What else…
- the suspension rules have changed to almost entirely eliminate ties
- on a dropped third strike, if the batter leaves the dirt area around home plate, they’re out – the catcher doesn’t have to chase them,
- players can’t run into the dugout to catch a foul
- the rules around suspended games changes, so there almost can’t be a tie anymore.

I’m disappointed by the changes. Baseball cracked the rules open to fix some things and didn’t change, for instance, the horrible rules around rainouts. That whole section’s going to ruin a post-season game or a pennant race eventually, and baseball’s ignoring it until they’re forced to confront the situation.

It’s weird that baseball announced this with a tiny story late on Friday, attempting to avoid the news cycle (this is why politicians release all their unflattering news on Fridays – by Monday it’s stale and the press doesn’t cover it). These are substantial changes, especially to the way things like sacrifice bunts are scored, and deserve notice and discussion.

I will not be biking between them, if you’re curious.

April 11th, ~7pm, Third Place Books in Bothell

April 26th, ~7pm, Powell’s

I’ve been to 3rd place before for BP stuff. I’m so excited to be heading to Powell’s. I’ve always loved the store, and thinking about heading down there for an event makes me happy.

I’ve converted the Cheater’s Gudie blog to the new host and WordPress. Sorry for any inconvenience.

I’m sad to learn this morning that Lew Burdette passed at eighty. What I haven’t heard yet is a good tribute to his talent for the spitter. Here’s what I wrote about Burdette in The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball:

Lew Burdette was the greatest spitballer of the 1950s. He debuted in 1950 but didn’t ttstart pitching regularly until 1952 at the age of 23. Everyone accused Burdette of throwing the spitball because of the dramatic downward break he could get on a pitch, but he always denied it. When he hung up the spikes in 1967, he had won 203 games, gone to two All-Star games in 1957 and 1959, and in 1958 finished third in Cy Young voting.

Burdette would get good hitters to come up to the plate and stare at him, waiting for the spitball, watching strike after strike go past them, right over the plate, and then they’d go sit down, angry they hadn’t seen a spitter.

Burdette, like other great cheaters, helped force a rule change that prohibited pitchers from going to their mouth while on the mound. Burdette, like some of the other great trick pitchers, eventually did admit he’d been putting something on the ball, but not what he was accused of: “I wet my fingers by bringing them to my mouth once in a while like a lot of other pitchers do. It’s a nervous habit. But I go to my eyebrows a lot more, and that’s when my fingers get real wet. I’m a prey good perspirer, one of the best, and the sweat runs down my forehead and soaks my eyebrows.”

It seems strange to know Burdette from reading all those game stories for so long, and then in reading these stories, not see this part of his game mentioned. Burdette was a fun player to research, and I feel like I miss him a little already.