The Saga of Scott Kazmir

Drafted, disciplined, traded, lionized, traded, released, finished.

The saga of Scott Kazmir is summed up neatly with that order of words.

With the news in this Jayson Stark piece on ESPN that his fastball is puttering in at 84-85 mph, he might be better-suited to begin throwing sidearm and marketing himself as a lefty specialist.

Because he was such a high-profile player and representative of so many different things—a questioned draft pick and trade; a falling star; trading a name player sooner rather than later; an attitude problem—it’s easily lost that Kazmir, with his draft status and subsequent salaries in mind, has been mostly a bust.

The Mets drafted Kazmir in 2002 and it wouldn’t have been as noteworthy had the process not been detailed in Moneyball. The Mets were going to draft Nick Swisher if Kazmir wasn’t available—and they didn’t think he would be—but he was and they took him.

In the minors, Kazmir had a reputation for swaggering arrogance and off-field mishaps. It drew the ire of the Mets’ influential veterans Al Leiter and John Franco when, in the team’s weight room, Kazmir changed their radio station and they told him to change it back.

Mets’ pitching czar Rick Peterson advocated the ill-fated trade the Mets made for Victor Zambrano in July of 2004 not because of disciplinary issues, but because of the cold, hard data that Peterson relies on in judging his charges. Zambrano would help immediately and Peterson felt that he could repair his mechanics and make him more effective; Kazmir was small, had a stressful motion and wouldn’t be a durable rotation linchpin for at least another 2-3 years and only that for a short period of time.

The Devil Rays acquired him while still being run by Chuck LaMar and brought him to the big leagues later that season. Opposing hitters were impressed and writers eagerly used the array of power stuff displayed by Kazmir to hammer the Mets decisionmakers for trading him. It was that Mets regime’s flashpoint and death knell. Zambrano went on the disabled list after three starts and the Mets came apart leading to the demotion of GM Jim Duquette in favor of Omar Minaya and the firing of manager Art Howe.

Peterson survived the purge.

Kazmir was impressive over parts of the next five seasons with his best and most durable year coming in 2007 with the rebuilding Rays. He struck out 239 hitters in 32 starts and made the All Star team. But there were warning signs. He had elbow and shoulder woes and, under the pretense of financial constraints and falling from playoff contention in August of 2009, the Rays made him available via trade.

The Angels came calling and dealt three prospects for Kazmir and the $20 million+ remaining on his contract.

In reality, the Rays saw that Kazmir was declining and an injury waiting to happen, so they dumped him and his salary and got some useful pieces in Sean Rodriguez and two minor leaguers in exchange.

Kazmir had a mysterious “back injury” in 2011 that was more likely a face-saving gesture from the Angels to let him try and straighten himself out while not enduring the embarrassment of a former All-Star being sent to the minors. While trying to come back, he got pounded in 5 minor league starts and the Angels released him.

After his release, teams considered Kazmir, but no one signed him.

As much as the Mets are rightfully criticized for that trade, it turned out that the mistake wasn’t dealing him, but what they dealt him for. Following that season, there was every possibility that they could’ve centered Kazmir around a deal for Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder or inquired about Ben Sheets. Instead, they got Zambrano; Zambrano got hurt; and there was a regime change in Flushing.

Kazmir is about done now. The next step is either have a surgery that he may or may not need to “fix” a problem that doesn’t exist and “prove” that he’s on the comeback trail and will again have that velocity and movement that made him such a coveted prospect to begin with.

My advice to Kazmir is, as I said earlier, become a sidearming lefty specialist. He’ll always have a job and might even be effective in that role.

But will his ego be able to handle it? Unless he’s remarkably stupid and wasteful, he has enough money to live the rest of his life, so it comes down to whether or not he wants to continue playing baseball.

It won’t be as an All-Star starter because that pitcher, along with the one who’s immortalized in print and perception for the right and wrong reasons, is gone forever.

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Why Talent Evaluators ARE Talent Evaluators And Guys Sitting In Booths Are...Well, Guys Sitting In Booths

• Mets 9-Astros 1; the non-expertise of the non-experts:

I don't know if anyone----including anyone with the Mets----could possibly have predicted

that Mike Pelfrey would become the consistent, strike-throwing, winning machine he's become. If he didn't have any ability, the Mets wouldn't have taken him with the ninth pick in the draft in 2005, but it would've been considered ludicrous to think that he'd be on track to winning a possible 17-18 games in his first full big league season after his struggles in the brief chances he received in 2006 and 2007. The geniuses on sports talk radio would have scoffed and shouted down any caller that even dared suggest such a thing; and if anyone did call with that opinion, and called back now, they'd be dismissed as guessing and being lucky as if they were at a roulette table. That Pelfrey's doing it throwing little more than a hard sinking fastball and when his team so desperately needed him to step into the breech left by the injury to John Maine makes it even more impressive.
Pelfrey always had the physical goods to succeed in this way----he stands 6'7"; throws in the mid-90s; has a hard sinking fastball; and a clean motion----but to make it this quickly is

stunning and I wouldn't expect to hear any of these self-styled experts admit that they were wrong when they were "evaluating" Pelfrey based on nothing more than his results; and even if they do admit they were wrong (usually in an unapologetic aside while maintaining their arrogant, all-knowing tone), they still succeeded in riling up the gullible fan base whose opinions change with every pitch.
The credit for Pelfrey's rise will undoubtedly go to new pitching coach Dan Warthen and manager Jerry Manuel; the truth is that Pelfrey started turning the corner under the loquacious former pitching coach Rick Peterson and manager Willie Randolph. For all of his blather, Peterson is a fine and astute pitching coach whose shelf-life working with the same pitchers is a short one. He does his research;

knows the science and psychology of working with pitchers young and old and has a track record of success. His problem is that his message is eventually lost because pitchers tune him out.
Years ago, I was watching a televised Mets spring training throwing session with a friend, a former professional player whose experiences had left him cynical about baseball and it's machinations; in the session, former pitching coach Bob Apodaca was talking to veteran Al Leiter as he did his work; Apodaca was rambling about the effectiveness of a change-up, blah, blah, blah as Leiter politely nodded while looking down and kicking at the dirt in front of the rubber. Turning to my friend I said, "You do know that Leiter did not listen to one word Apodaca just said," to which he twisted him mouth and shrugged an acknowledging laugh. It's the same thing with most coaches, but more so with the more cerebral and long-winded ones like Peterson.
If I had to give an expiration date to an organization that was thinking of bringing Peterson in and intends to have the same nucleus of a pitching staff, I'd say it would be 2 1/2 to three years before the pitchers start tuning him out. It gets tiresome to have someone always...in...your...face repeating the same things over and over again with numbers that pitchers don't want to hear and advice that they could (and probably do) recite to one another when in private and goofing on the coach and his well-intentioned advice. Sometimes a different voice isn't even needed; the pitchers on the Mets staff who seem to have improved since Peterson's departure may have done just as well without any pitching coach at all

because they would've been perfectly happy to have been left alone.
There are plenty of talent evaluators in baseball who don't know much more than the broadcasters do; but there are plenty who know what they're looking at and can analyze a player's potential. The criticism is one thing, but it's the complete inability to admit when one is wrong and that they don't realize that they know literally nothing about baseball that is the most irritating thing. That they still have some credibility despite their obvious stupidity, and the hypocrisy they're going to show as they discuss the rise of Mike Pelfrey makes it all the worse because they're still clueless and are too clueless to even realize that they're clueless and if they do realize it, they're still arrogant enough to refuse to admit it.

• Rangers 9-Royals 4; Nelson Cruz's latest chance:

The last month of the season should be interesting to get a gauge on whether or not Rangers outfielder Nelson Cruz is ever going to be able to translate his minor league production to the majors. He got off to a great start last night by going 3 for 5 with a homer

and a double, but at age 28, it's time for him to prove he can do it in the majors.
The thing about Cruz that's so aggravating is that he murders Triple A pitching. His numbers this year alone playing in Oklahoma are mind boggling: AVG-.342; OBP-.429; Runs-93; RBI-99; Home Runs-37; Slugging-.695; OPS-1.124; Stolen Bases-24. And this isn't just one career year; the guy's done this before in the minors----Cruz minor league stats. The one thing I have to ask is why the Rangers left him in the minors for so long? He at least deserved another opportunity to play at least part-time in the majors even though he's failed before.
Cruz is always going to get chances with other organizations even if he doesn't make it with the Rangers because those other organizations are going to look at those numbers and sign him just to see if he can fulfill that potential for them. With the Rangers out of contention, they should put him out there every day and see if he can perform for at least a brief time in the majors and deliver those results; worst case scenario, they'll showcase him for another organization and trade him because the talent is there and those numbers are accrued by that talent and not just a player feasting on Triple A pitching.

• More little league nonsense:

There's more to this story----Yahoo Sports----than just a kid who can throw too hard for the other kids. I'm no fan of little league; the oft-repeated cliches that it's about oneupsmanship and selfishness among the parents, among other things, are all true; but if this is such a big problem, why don't they solve it by putting the kid in a higher league? He'll advance faster if he's dealing with better competition and the other kids won't have to deal with his fastball. I wouldn't be surprised if other issues start to leak out about this and it won't be that the kid's simply too good.

An Objective Look At Willie Randolph's Tenure

• Randolph's Mets managerial epitaph:

When Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones fired coach Jimmy Johnson after winning two consecutive Super Bowls in 1993 and 1994, it was following a blowup between the two at an NFL function

after which Jones had a few drinks and asserted that any number of coaches could have won with the Cowboys' talent and that Johnson's contribution was just that----a contribution amongst a large number of people. There had been tension between Johnson and Jones for years as they rebuilt the Cowboys, much of it centering on who would receive the bulk of the credit; these things happen with two big personalities with even bigger egos, but the idea was that Jones was diminishing Johnson's accomplishment by saying that his part in the resurrection of the franchise wasn't as important as others thought it was. Jones may have been overstating the situation by saying that 500 coaches could have won with that Cowboys team, but the overall idea that many different coaches or managers can achieve similar successes with the same teams is not unreasonable; it's something to truly consider carefully. This begs the question: how much credit should Willie Randolph receive for the rise of the Mets from when he arrived and was his contribution any greater (or less) than it would've been under a different manager?
When GM Omar Minaya was hired late in the 2004 season, the Mets were an utter disaster and laughingstock around the major leagues. They played listlessly; there was infighting and no one seemed to know who was in charge. In New York, they were borderline irrelevant as fans became numb to the constant turmoil. Manager Art Howe was fired as

Minaya rightfully wanted to turn the page completely from the previous regime(s) and start fresh with a manager of his choosing. That manager was Willie Randolph. What was strange though, was how Minaya was able to convince the ownership, Fred and Jeff Wilpon, to open the Mets vault to spend some money on free agents while dispatching the aging and overly influential veterans Al Leiter and John Franco. I've always been curious as to Howe's private reaction to the news that the Mets had spent so lavishly to

sign Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran while he was forced to play Jason Phillips at first base and usher in the youngsters Jose Reyes and David Wright as they learned to play in the big leagues.
Randolph was walking into a pretty good situation. A honeymoon for a lifelong winner; a popular New Yorker who, despite his Yankees roots, grew up as a Mets fan in Brooklyn. There were few expectations even with the high-priced free agents and anything the team did positively after the previous few years was going to make the manager a hero. The Mets and Randolph endured their growing pains in 2005 because of the new manager's inexperience and the lack of overall talent on the team, but ended a respectable 83-79 and were once again a force on and off the field because Pedro gave them an identity and it was now known that they were willing to spend money to try and win. But was that 83-79 really that great an accomplishment?
The last team under Howe in 2004 went 71-91; are you going to seriously tell me that the Mets roster in 2005 in comparison to that in 2004 wasn't worth an extra 12 wins? Would

Howe not have benefited from the maturing Reyes and Wright and the presence of Martinez and Beltran? Along with the dispatching of the interfering busybodies in Leiter and Franco? This is not to imply that Minaya shouldn't have brought in the manager that he wanted or that the discipline and seriousness that Randolph instilled didn't contribute to the Mets improvement, but based on talent alone, Howe likely would have replicated Randolph's 2005 success.
In 2006, the Mets ran away with the NL East and lost in the NLCS to the Cardinals. That roster was power packed with the newly acquired and still slugging Carlos Delgado; along with a near MVP year from Beltran and the emerging stars Wright and Reyes, the Mets were the consensus pick to go the World Series. With all of the talent on that roster, shouldn't they have been expected to make it as far as they did and possibly further than they did? Wasn't part of the reason that the Cardinals beat the Mets that year due to the strategic wizardry of Cardinals manager Tony La Russa?
In 2007, as Delgado began to lose bat speed; injuries robbed the Mets of Pedro and the overuse of the bullpen wore them down late in the season, one has to wonder whether another manager who was more prudent in the use of his relievers and able to adjust his message on

the fly while deflecting the negative aspects of managing in New York would've been able to steer the team through the struggles and prevent the collapse. In 2008 until Randolph was let go, there was an aura of resignation around the team. With the veterans continuing their downslide, the organization still in denial about what happened in 2007; and the cloud of malaise around the players; along with the repeated questions about the manager's job status, the result was probably never in doubt. A move had to be made and while it probably wasn't done quickly or cleanly enough for the tastes of the fainthearted, it was necessary.
There have been teams that have won with lesser talent because of their manager or coach. Billy Martin was a master at maximizing his players abilities in the short-term; in

hockey, Mike Keenan will turn a team around quickly simply because of the system he implements and his discipline; in football, Bill Parcells will pretty much guarantee a competitive team within three years of his arrival. La Russa is so brilliant that he can squeeze at least ten more wins out of his teams than would be realistically expected; but how many managers and coaches can say that? How many simply achieve what the talents of their players can achieve and occasionally less? It works the opposite way as well; the Diamondbacks under Bob Brenly could just as easily have reached the same heights with a scarecrow strategically placed in the corner of the dugout. The talent usually dictates what the team will accomplish unless they have a Hall of Famer running things. The people mentioned above are Hall of Famers; Art Howe isn't a Hall of Famer as a manager, but then neither is Willie Randolph.

• J.D. Drew is playing like an MVP:

Stunningly, the player to pick up the slack for the Red Sox after the loss of David Ortiz hasn't been Manny Ramirez, but has been J.D. Drew. Drew, at the unlikely age of 32, is staying healthy and killing the ball to the point that he's a legitimate MVP threat. Of course, there's always the possibility (or likelihood) of the oft-injured Drew winding up on the disabled

list at any given moment for some shocking injury to a bone or muscle that even most doctors didn't know the human body had, but for right now he's been playing great. He's getting on base; hitting homers and playing great defense. Most of all he's stayed healthy and made the loss of Ortiz seem like nothing more than a small bump for the team, and he's expected back sooner rather than later.
Drew's had spurts like this before and then something has invariably happened to halt his progress, but he's earning his money and doing his job. After last year's sub par year and amid all the smirking "I told you so's" doled out to Theo Epstein and Larry Lucchino, they're getting far more than what they paid for in Drew this year. I'd hesitate to think he's going to keep it up, but if he does nothing more than get them from before Ortiz got hurt until after Ortiz returns and still have the team in first place, that, coupled with his grand slam in the ALCS last year, will give the Red Sox hierarchy cause to say that Drew was worth the money and the ridicule no matter what happens from now on.

• Barry Zito rumored to contact Rick Peterson:

There's a story circulating that soon after Rick Peterson was fired by the Mets, Barry Zito contacted his mentor to help him rediscover whatever he's lost on the way to a 2-11 record this year and a contract that is looking more and more like money flushed down the toilet. Giants pitching coach Dave Righetti was said to be unhappy with the idea that Zito go to another pitching coach, but he needs to see the big picture; the Giants have so much money invested in Zito that if Righetti can't straighten him out, then they're going to find someone who can and that someone may be Peterson. Instead of getting angry and becoming territorial, Righetti should probably accept that Zito may need to talk to someone else; someone he knows and is comfortable with if for no other reason than to keep his job and not be replaced by Peterson completely.