Renaming the Divisions

By Bill


Last week, upon learning that the Twins had worked out a deal to send Jim Thome back to Cleveland, I tweeted this:

The idea being, obviously, that he's been such a prominent feature of that division for so long, and for multiple teams -- he's Cleveland's all-time home run leader, he won a World Series with um, played really well for the White Sox, and he hit his 600th homer with the Twins -- that he's just kind of the face of the division, and it would be kind of cool to go ahead and name the division after him. And "Thome Division" sounds a lot better to me than "Central Division." That's something you can get behind. Might even start seeing some (easily swayed) people take pride in their division, like in college football, if the divisions were named after something other than their relative geographic positioning.

It's fun having smart Twitter friends. In this case, it was Sam Miller of the Orange County Register (and other places) and Matthew Leach of MLB.com who dove in and helped fill out the rest of the majors. 

So with a ton of help from those guys and a few other folks who joined in, we'll name the player after whom each division should be renamed. The criteria are like this: 

• To be considered,  a player must have played for at least three teams within the same division.
• Significant service on each one of at least three teams is the key; so a guy who played five years each as a regular with the Red Sox, Orioles and Blue Jays is a stronger candidate than a guy who spent twenty years with the Yankees and ten games apiece with the Rays and Jays.
• This should go without saying, but the guy has to actually be commonly associated with that division. Pedro Martinez played for each of the Mets, Phillies, and Expos, but what division does he belong in, really? Right, the AL East. So he's out.
• And it has to at least mostly have happened during the three-division era, starting in 1994. Donnie Moore played for the Cubs, Cardinals and Brewers...but the Brewers were in the American League at the time, so that kind of defeats the purpose.

OK? So here are your new divisions:

Yet Another Slugger Linked to PEDs...By Random Trolling Columnist With Zero Evidence

By The Common Man

In the wake of Jeff Miller’s reeking post about Jim Thome and his baseless accusation that Thome used steroids (TCM won’t link to the actual article, which is a classic attempt to troll the internet. Instead, read Matthew Pouliot’s takedown on HardballTalk), The Common Man wants to skip his usual rant about the dangers of idiots with media credentials, who seem to think that their journalism degree gives them license to essentially slander another person with the charge of PED use. And he’s skip the lecture about the hypocrisy of the mainstream sports media, who refuse to call out one of their own for such disgusting, unfounded allegations, despite the fact that the mainstream media would (rightfully) pillory an unaffiliated blogger who made similar claims. Instead, The Common Man wants to tell you a story.

On Jimmers and 600 Taters

By Bill

A few thoughts on everyone's favorite half-giant, Jim Thome, while I ponder the fact that since the last time I wrote here (just a little more than two weeks ago, before the big move and starting a new job and so forth), Dan Uggla's OPS has gone up about a hundred points:

• Thome's been a Hall of Famer for like five years now. He hit his 500th home run way back in 2007. His 70.8 rWAR is fourth among active players (behind A-Rod, Pujols, and Chipper, and ahead of Jeter), and tenth all-time among first basemen (using a 40% cutoff; Thome didn't quite play half of his career games at first). If you hear anyone speak of his 600th home run as though it makes or even just significantly strengthens his Hall of Fame case, you have my permission to slap them.* Hard.* Case made, quite a while ago. Big round numbers are fun, but not necessary.
   
• That said, is anyone actually doing or saying those things? I feel like a lot more people are complaining about his being underrated than are actually underrating him at this point. Yeah, over the course of his career, he's been unfairly overlooked. Now, though, I think almost everyone realizes how great he's been (more or less), and I don't get the sense that many more Hall of Fame voters would pick him today than would have yesterday morning (there are a few that wouldn't in either case, but they're morons beyond hope and aren't worth discussing). I could be wrong.
  
  
• Speaking of being overlooked during his time, though, Thome has started just two All-Star Games and made just five All-Star teams. The game wasn't even instituted until Babe Ruth's second-to-last full season, and he started two ASGs. No one else in the top eleven in homers started fewer than five or been named to fewer than seven.
   
• Thome was drafted as a shortstop, played 40 games there in the minors, and then played exclusively third base until his age-26 season. As a rookie, he looked like this, then quickly got huge. He hit with modest power in the minors, then averaged just 34 homers per season from age 24 to 29, then 46 per season in his five healthy seasons between ages 30 and 35. I'd never accuse anybody of taking anything -- I have no evidence, and if I did, I wouldn't care -- and least of all Thome, possibly my favorite active player. But it just illustrates to me how insane the whole PED witch hunt is. It seems to me that there's exactly as much evidence of PED use in Thome's career as in Jeff Bagwell's (that is to say, no evidence), but that one is assumed to be "clean" and one "dirty" for no reason I can figure other than that Thome apparently enjoys the hell out of a cheeseburger, fries and a beer every now and again.
  
  
• Or maybe I'm wrong, and maybe people do suspect Thome. Or will come to sometime in the next six or seven years. That's even more ridiculous, so much so that I don't even think I can talk about it.
  
  
• As Craig Calcaterra pointed out on Twitter, Thome hit his first home run when "I Adore Mi Amor" by Color Me Badd was the #1 song in the country. Also worth noting: Thome was drafted in 1989, before Mike Stanton, Jason Heyward, and Starlin Castro were born. When he made his MLB debut a bit over two years later, on September 4, 1991, the youngest player of the 2011 season to date, Mike Trout, turned four weeks old. The pitcher off of whom he hit that first home run, Steve Farr -- and it was a ninth-inning two run homer that turned a 2-1 loss to the Yankees into a 3-2 Cleveland win -- is now 54 years old. Thome went 0-for-4 with a walk and two K's against Nolan Ryan, now 64.

Anyway, a hearty congratulations to Jim Thome on a really tremendous accomplishment. I've never met Thome and I don't really know anything about him as a person, but he sure seems like one of the real, genuine good guys, and is possibly the only player I've ever actively rooted for while he was wearing a White Sox uniform. Last night was just one of those good nights for baseball.

* My permission has no legal effect. Don't slap people.

The Thome Effect

Yesterday, the Twins signed Jim Thome to a one-year deal for $1.5 million guaranteed, with the potential of earning up to $2.2 million. It’s a modest deal for a player who really is limited at this point to drawing walks and slugging the ball against RHP. A couple days ago, Friend of the Blog and The Common Man’s boyhood chum Bill at The Daily Something, expressed great reservation over a potential deal, writing “bringing a full-time DH…to get a Kubel/Young platoon that has to play in the field seems like an enormous waste in every possible way.” Last night, we discussed this further and, while The Common Man has reservations about the deal, he's conditionally optimistic.

First, provided his production doesn’t slip precipitously, Thome’s bat presents an upgrade for the Twins against RHP over what Delmon Young would provide. Young has hit .283/.317/.396 against RHP in his career, well below average for any position, let alone LF. What’s more, he’s shown no improvement in that ability in the last four years. Thome, meanwhile, crushes righties, hitting .262/.383/.498 against them last year as a 38-year old. Thome would have to utterly collapse to actually fare worse against RHP in 2010 than Young will.

What’s more, using Thome against RHP gets Young out of the field. Young roams LF like he’s wearing ice skates to run across hot coals. The numbers say he’s bad, but they really don’t give a strong enough indication of just how horrible he looks out there. Young plays LF is like watching a whale do ballet: at once fascinating, ugly, and utterly ineffective. It’s true that Young’s just going to be replaced by Jason Kubel, whose track record in the outfield (back when he used to play regularly) was not good. Kubel actually started 53 games in LF and RF last year, and acquitted himself relatively well, and perhaps has recovered enough from the devastating knee injury that debilitated him in 2005, 2006, and possibly 2007 to make him an acceptable defender in the corner. Or he might not have. Either way, he’s probably better than Young at this point, so that’s an upgrade as well.


Fig. 1 Somebody feels left out.

Bill may very well be right when he suggests that the Twins would have been better served by signing an Endy Chavez or Randy Winn and upgrading a very questionable OF defense. Denard Span is stretched as a CF and, again, Young and Kubel in LF is not ideal. Michael Cuddyer also has been pretty bad in RF since 2006. But it’s also undeniable that the Twins are better today than they were two days ago.

There is a big “but” however, in this scenario. If the Twins do not deploy Thome optimally, it’s hard to see this move as a win for them. It has been rumored that Thome will primarily serve as a backup DH and pinch-hitter, a role that he did not excel at for the Dodgers last year. Such a scenario would force Young back into the field and to the plate against RHP and would severely cripple the team offensively, defensively, and on the bench. If Thome is only viewed as a back-up, then in any given game, the Twins (as currently constructed) figure to go with Jose Morales as the backup C, Thome sitting out, Alexi Casilla or Matt Tolbert backing up at 2B (with Punto as the backup SS, presumably). They still need a backup CF (unless that’s Jason Pridie or Rene Tosoni, /shudder). Having Thome primarily as a bench player severely limits the team’s flexibility, especially if they’re committed to carrying 12 pitchers (as they have been these past few years). The Twins would be left with one backup IF, one OF, one C, and one PH. Such a roster construction would make shuffling players around to keep everyone fresh and reduce day-to-day injuries difficult.


Fig. 2 The Twins' new outfield/DH/bench solution.

Also, and this is something The Common Man didn’t think of until just now, the Thome signing may eliminate one of the Twins’ truly innovative lineup decisions from last year, DHing Joe Mauer when he’s not catching, a decision that likely allowed the Twins to eke out a win in their division. Late last season, when Mauer sat against RHP, Kubel typically moved into the outfield, while Morales caught, because Young was so hopeless. Now, however, with a legitimate DH on the roster, the usually unimaginative Ron Gardenhire might sit Mauer more often, reducing his superhuman contribution to the lineup. This too, would be disastrous, as Mauer is virtually guaranteed to out-produce Thome.

So count The Common Man as cautiously optimistic about Jim Thome, Minnesota Twin. He hopes to bump into the burly DH at Twinsfest this weekend. But that doesn’t eliminate the team’s need for additional help in the infield, or his desperate wish the team would carry just 11 pitchers.