Big Mike: My Heart Bleeds For You, AJ

Poor AJ. His boys won 95 games in 2009. Apparently they were the wrong kind of wins. Or something.

I would have sawed off my right pinkie for 95 wins (not my left pinkie, though, since I’m trying to learn how to play the guitar.)

Are your fears for the Flaming Hose really warranted? Ortiz’s RBI were “quiet”? Bay “put up terrific numbers but… he’s a bit overrated”? Papelbon “gave up walks or hits and often had difficulty finishing batters off”? Ellsbury “can be pitched to by better pitchers”? Sheesh!

Whaddya want 105 wins?

I suppose the answer yes. Who wouldn’t want 105 wins? But no one — repeat, no one — can construct a team with the expectation that they’ll win 105. Not even the colossus that occupies new Yankee Stadium won 105 (of course, they did knock off 103 opponents but let’s not quibble.)

Have the Red Sox and their fans become — dare I say it — too demanding? It seems a short half decade ago, il Nazione del Calzini Rossi would have been thrilled to string up 95 fascisti. Now, 95 wins — bah! A bag of shells.

Were I the majordomo of the Sox, I wouldn’t worry too much about Papelbon’s walks or hits (his WHIP stood at a fine 1.15.) If Bay’s putting up terrific numbers, I’d say, Keep it up, Jason my boy. As for Ellsbury’s problems with better pitchers? Um, I’d guess the reason those guys are “better pitchers” is because they get most guys out, period.

I would fret a little about David Ortiz. He’s now 34 years old and weighs 230 pounds — at least that’s what the Red Sox web site claims. His bathroom scale might dissent. His best years are like a big ass — behind him. Then again, most AL teams would drool over the prospect of their DHs putting up mediocre Ortiz numbers. The Boston club really ain’t got much to worry about does it?

Sometimes fans and even GMs can overreact. Take last off-season. After the Cubs had led the National League with 97 wins, they went out and jumped in front of that speeding bus from LA. Fans boo-hooed as if the Cubs had gone sub-.500. Lou Piniella suggested that maybe the team needed a left handed bat to counteract teams loading up with righthanders against them — as the Dodgers did. Hungry Jim Hendry promptly turned over 40 percent of his roster, mainly in an effort to afford the $30M/3-year deal he bestowed upon Milton Bradley.

Pardon me while I have a seizure. Gurgle, gulp, ack-ack-ack. The memory of the Bradley signing is now a lesion in my brain that occasionally causes electrical disturbances among my remaining several hundred neurons. Ah — all better now.

Hendry dumped Mark DeRosa, Kerry Wood and Jason Marquis, all in an effort to squeeze Gameboard into the budget. The 2009 team could have used a nice fifth starter like Marquis (who, by the way, went to the all-star game.) They would have benefitted greatly from DeRosa’s 23 home runs, especially in Aramis Ramirez’s absence. Wood? Well, he stunk the joint up with the Tribe but he still was better than the execrable Kevin Gregg.

Be careful what you wish for, AJ. What’s Theo Epstein to do? Look for a centerfielder? Yeah, you could do better than young Jacoby. You could grab Carlos Beltran from the Mets and hope he thrives in Fenway. But at what cost?

Should Theo let Bay or Drew walk? Whaddya gonna do then? Play Joey Gathright and Rocco Baldelli?

In terms of planning, a good GM walks the tightrope. He (or she — Kim Ng, I hear, is in the running for the Padres job) can’t rely on an unchanging roster year after year. He also can’t swap his assets like so many baseball cards.

The Big Mike Philosophy of Building a Baseball Team, taught at the better universities around the country, holds that the GM should build his team with an aim to win 90 games. If your team is a consistent 90-game-winner, you’ll be battling for the division title every single year. And while the team may occasionally dip to 84-78, it’ll just as often rise to 96-66. That’s definite Champagne territory.

Now you may say 96 wins is fine for the Minnesota Twins or the Colorado Rockies but the Red Sox share a division with the Yankees. Okay. Let the Yanks spend $200M every year and win the East. It’s no dishonor to sneak into the playoffs via the Wild Card. In fact, the Red Sox of 2004 rode that ticket to their first World Series win in 10,000 years (that ancient triumph over the hated Jericho Palms!)

Just because New York assembled an all-star team and danced to the division title doesn’t mean Theo (and you) should panic. Theo (and you) should start planning for a future without Big Papi but the current lineup built around Pedroia, Bay, Youkilis and Martinez (assuming everybody’s re-signed) is scarier than a Glenn Beck commentary.

Boston is a lock to win at least 90 in 2010. Even if David Ortiz’s bat continues to soften and Josh Beckett’s back continues to throb, the Red Sox, along with the Yankees and Angels, will be the cream of the league. You worry too much.

Me? I’ve got Bradley in right field, Carlos Zambrano on the mound, and a century-plus of losing on my mind. I worry.

Big Mike: Who Needs Runs?

The cream of the Cubs farm system is a third baseman named Josh Vitters, the number three overall selection in the 2007 amateur draft. That June, he was acclaimed as the “most polished” high school hitter in the draft, whatever in the hell that means.

The Arizona Fall League commenced 2009 play Wednesday and Vitters went three for four with a double in the Phoenix Desert Dogs’ 4-2 victory over the Mesa Solar Sox. The North Side is abuzz, hoping the kid turns out to be the real thing. I — the voice of reason, natch — have to throw cold water on this line of thinking.

Vitters takes a walk about as often as Glenn Beck takes a moment to think about what he’s going to say. In 458 at bats this past season with the Single A Peoria Chiefs and the Double A Daytona Cubs, Vitters drew a grand total of 12 bases on balls. Twelve. Not even a baker’s goddamned dozen.

Your grandmother and your teething toddler know that minor league free-swingers are the worst bets to become capable big league hitters. If guys like Vitters can’t figure out a way to lay off those big, jug-handled curves that are 14 inches outside and those sliders in the dirt in places like Peoria, they’re going to get chewed up and spit out the second they hit the bigs.

The Cubs are notorious for bringing up kids who haven’t the faintest idea what the strike zone is all about. Going back to Shawon Dunston and through Corey Patterson and Felix Pie, Cubs phenoms have acted as though swinging at every pitch is a compulsory act. Dunston, for instance, in 1995 drew 10 walks in 503 plate appearances. And that was his 11th year in the majors!

The entire Cubs organization is notorious for having been slow on the uptake when it comes to the tenets of sabermetrics. The Bill James crowd has preached plate discipline and on-base percentage since the late 1970s. The Cubs occasionally acknowledge that it’s nice to take a walk. yet no one from the front office publicly extols the virtues of patience. Hitters who control the strike zone not only maximize the chance that they’ll see a fat pitch but they force the pitcher to throw, throw, throw — meaning the starter lasts a shorter time in the game and he’ll likely be more hittable by the middle innings. It all sounds so reasonable.

Yet the Cubs treat this philosophy as so much Zoroastrianism, arcane and quaint. The nadir of such thought came during the tenure of one Johnnie B. Baker as manager. Dusty never let an opportunity pass to tell the world how impatient he was with patient hitters. His assertion that walks clog the bases is now risibly legendary.

The 2008 Cubs led the National League in runs, something they hadn’t done in…, let’s see, hmm, oh yeah…, my goddamned lifetime! And I’m older than Gabby Hartnett, for chrissakes. The Cubs have led the league in runs precisely once in my 6000 years on this planet despite playing in a ballpark that for most of that time was the definitive hitters haven.

And how did the Cubs lead the league in runs in 2008? By walking a league-leading 636 times! Walks equal men on base. Having men on base means you have a greater chance of scoring runs. Simple, no?

This year, the Cubs went back to their impulsive ways. They stopped being selective at the plate and consequently dropped to 11th in the league in runs scored. Their limp-dick offense killed them this year, considering the pitchers posted a fine earned run average that ranked fourth in the league. And, by the way, the three teams that ranked ahead of them all benefitted from playing in pitchers’ parks.

Aaaarrrggghhh…, the Cubs make me so mad!

So the future rests in the hands of yet another kid who eschews patience and discipline at the plate. Hey, kids like Vitter think, I swung at everything in high school and hit them all a mile — may as well keep doing it! Only the big leagues ain’t high school.

Something the Cubs’ successive brain trusts have never figured out.