Manny Being Someone Else

Dwight Schrute may be the most amusing character on television today (though Michael Scott does give him a run for his money. Militantly productive, anti-social, paranoid, ambitious, and authoritarian, Rainn Wilson's Schrute is the ultimate terrible coworker. But for all the headaches he creates for his higher-ups with his sexism and his power plays and his sycophantism, Schrute is tolerated at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company for one reason: he is an excellent salesman. He brings the same single-minded, rabid enthusiasm to his job that he has in the rest of his life. And because of that he is successful.

Manny Ramirez is Dwight Schrute.


Manny's behavior has already gotten him run out of one city, where his performance (though still excellent) was not enough to compensate for the headaches he created. However, since his trade to the Dodgers, now a full half-season ago, Manny's performance has compensated for a lot. In 341 plate appearances, Manny has hit an amazing .385/.493/.718 with 23 homers and 71 RBI, despite being 37 years old. That will cover up a lot of setting the office on fire:

When Something Bad Is Actually Good...

Do you want to have your mind blown? The Twins are counting on Nick Punto and Alexi Casilla to provide passable offense up the middle, in their quest to take home their 5th division title since 2002 (though just their first since 2006). By and large, neither have done anything at the plate. Nick Punto, as he did in 2007 (when he "hit" .210/.291/.271), is walking and striking out at a prodigious rate while doing a terrible job of putting the bat on the ball. He's second on the team in pitches per plate appearance (4.05) though (and is leading it in embarrassing shirts). And his line drive percentage is an acceptable 19%. So even though, going into tonight's game against Detroit, Punto's at .224/.338/.239, chances are he'll be ok and that his poor start is due to some bad luck (his BABIP is just .268, despite the decent LD%).

Casilla, on the other hand, has been wretched in every aspect, not even showing a modicum of plate discipline. Going into tonight's game, Casilla was at .160/.232/.200. His line drive percentage is at just 8% this year, and has a corresponding .197 average on balls in play. Casilla's career LD% hovers around 12 (he'll likely always be dependent on bunt and IF singles), so his performance thusfar is much much more disappointing than usual.

While that's unbelievably bad, here's the mind-blowing part: Before tonight's game, against left-handed pitchers this year the dreadful duo are just 1/36 against lefties. Clearly something is wrong here. Punto is 0/16 with two walks. Casilla is 1/20 with a sacrifice bunt. Just so we're clear, after a full month of baseball, Punto's line against LHP is .000/.111/.000 and Casilla's is .050/.050/.111.

The good news in all of this, is that none of this performance is sustainable. Casilla will either hit more or lose his job. Neither of them can possibly be this bad against LHP over the full season. The singles will eventually start to drop for Punto. Meanwhile, among the Twins other hitters, none is a significant risk for regression (aside from Joe Mauer, who (going out on a limb here) probably won't hit .700/.727/1.200 for the rest of the year). Morneau may not have a .963 OPS for the rest of the year, and Jose Morales won't continue to hit .300, but Morales's regression will be covered by Mauer's presence and Morneau's slide should be adequately covered by a regression toward the mean (in a good way) by Casilla, Punto, Crede, and maybe Gomez.

The pitching, too, is a good bet to improve. Unless he's really, really hurt, Scott Baker is not going to continue to have a 9.15 ERA. Liriano is not going to stay at 6.04. And Slowey's not a good bet to stay at 5.17. Yes, the bullpen is still a mess. But once Crain comes back and the Twins learn to trust one or more of their minor league relievers (as Aaron pointed out today, Anthony Slama's struck out 20 in 11 innings at AA), they can jettison Ayala (please God, please).

This leaves the Twins in surprisingly good position to win the division with a strong final five months. It's a recipe that's worked before, and seems primed to happen again. Perhaps The Common Man's initial thoughts, of a .500 year, were too pessimistic...

The bad news tonight is that Jerry White was injured in the game today when he took a liner off the ankle in the first base coaching box.


Somebody, and The Common Man can't remember who for the life of him (help him out, readers), has been all over this lately. And he's right; it's amazing more people haven't been killed on the diamond with all the wicked googlies flying around the old ballyard. That said, there certainly seems to be a rash of on-the-field scariness lately, with Mike Coolbaugh's death last year and the scary Jose Martinez incident (where he took a comeback liner off the noggin).

Random Thursday: Ben Harris

At 3:30 this afternoon, The Common Man received a call from The Boy's daycare asking me to come and pick him up. It seems that purveyors of childcare do not want two-and-a-half year olds with a 102.7 fever around their other kids, no matter how full of good humor they may be. So The Common Man packed up his stuff, picked up The Uncommon Wife, and drove to get his virus-addled progeny. Now, The Common Man isn't stupid enough to think that his boy has the pandemic-that's-not-really-a-pandemic that's not sweeping our country. However, a fever of almost 103 is nothing to, ahem, sneeze at, and so The Common Man is naturally concerned.

So much so that he almost forgot to write tonight, though The Boy has been asleep since 8:30 or so.

But perhaps that's fitting, since the baseball community has largely forgotten about the Federal League, the subject of this weeks' offering to the Janus, the Roman god of chaos and randomness. Actually, that's not entirely accurate, fortune's wheel landed on Ben Harris this week, a disappointing reliever for the Kansas City Packers of the FL in 1914 and 1915. But The Common Man had trouble finding, really, anything of value to say about Harris, whose 7-7 record hid an ugly 4.09 ERA, 25% worse than the league average, and the mediocre club for which he played.

The Federal League declared itself a rival to the major league system in 1914, when it refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Big Leagues' reserve clauses and attempted to sign away many of the Majors' biggest stars. And indeed, in many respects, the Federal League succeeded in its goals. Big names bolted from its rival. Eddie Plank, Chief Bender, Three Finger Brown, Joe Tinker, Ed Konetchy and more jumped to the new league. They smartly stayed away from the MLB's traditional power base in the Northeast (especially in the first season), only going head-to-head with the Majors in cities that could potentially support another team: St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, and Chicago. The rest of the league was spread out around the West, in old, abandoned American Association and 19th Century NL towns (Indianapolis, Kansas City, Baltimore, and Buffalo).

Bill James, in his New Historical Baseball Abstract, writes, "The Federal League was a well-organized, well-financed, well-thought-out effort to construct a new league. I am inclined to believe that, had the Federal League been born at any other time, it might have well have [sic] become established." In particular, the league had to deal with overall uncertainty over brewing war in Europe, and baseball was suffering the effects of consumer uncertainty then just as it may be now.

In addition, the Federal League, like any third league, created inherent challenges for itself. It caused huge salary increases across the leagues, and down into the minor leagues as well. James argues that "the salaries forced Jack Dunn, owner/manager of the minor league Baltimore Orioles, to put his 19-year-old star pitcher, Babe Ruth, up for sale (otherwise Ruth would have spent several years, perhaps even a decade in Baltimore). What's more, subsequent research has made it clear that the Federal League's quality of play was incredibly low for a major league. Marginal major league talents, and past-their-prime pickups like Three Finger Brown thrived in the new league, dominating their inexperienced and untalented competition. What league organizers wanted, like the Players' League wanted in 1889, was to get the biggest stars from the majors. Instead, the leagues held onto the best of the best, letting 30-something veterans like Plank and Bender try for one last big payday in the FL.

And so, when the Major Leagues offered to buy out the FL owners to get rid of this new nuisance, Federal League owners didn't have a promising enough outlook to rebuff the offer. Instead, strong owners in Chicago and St. Louis were allowed to buy the Cubs and Browns respectively and the rest (save the Baltimore Terrapins owner, who refused to settle without being given a Major League team to operate from Baltimore) were bought out and their players distributed.

The Federal League, 95 years later, has left us with two enduring legacies. The first, thankfully, is Wrigley Field. Initially built to house the Chicago Whales, owner Charles Weeghman moved his new Cubs team into the stadium after being allowed to purchase it. Weeghman only owned the team for five years before it was sold to the good people of the Wrigley Chewing Gum Company.


The second legacy is much more of a mixed bag and stems from the anti-trust lawsuit filed by the Terrapins owner in 1916. Eventually, the case ended up before the Supreme Court in 1922, when the Court ruled that baseball was not considered Interstate Commerce, and in essence condoned the league's monopoly status, and has been used by Major League Baseball resist inquiry and interference, and baseball has jealously guarded its status ever since.

For further reading, check out Roberth Peyton Figgins' new book, The Federal League of Base Ball Clubs: The History of an Outlaw Major League, 1914-1915, or the late John Brittain's excellent article in the 2007 Hardball Times Annual that's around here somewhere but The Common Man can't find it for the life of him.

Not Crazy About Cuddyer

Longtime friend of the blog Bill, on his strong new blog The Daily Something, does a pretty nifty job of parsing out the Twins outfield/DH logjam.


For The Common Man’s money (of which there is precious little), the best alignments in the near future involve Denard Span/Carlos Gomez/Michael Cuddyer/Jason Kubel vs. RHP and Span/Gomez/Cuddyer/Joe Mauer vs. LHP with Mike Redmond or Jose Morales behind the plate. This would allow Mauer to rest his back until he proves he’s durable enough to be behind the plate every day. Delmon Young should be back in the minors learning either a) how to keep from hitting grounder after grounder to shortstop, b) how to play in the outfield, c) how to convey that he’s making a least a modicum of effort, or, ideally, d) all three.

Anyway, in the course of his examination, Bill throws out that Cuddyer “hits righties well enough to justify playing every day for most clubs.” It’s an argument The Common Man has heard time and again with the Twins, that they have five everyday outfielders, all of whom deserve to start and who could, in all probability, start elsewhere. In particular, a lot of Twins fans were hoping Cuddyer, the oldest and most expensive of the quintet, would have been dealt to start elsewhere. But is Cuddyer really that valuable? How many teams could actually use him?

Michael Cuddyer wasn’t healthy last year, so that’s a bad season on which to judge. That said, his career has contained exactly one year of very good hitting, 2007, when he hit .284/.362/.504 and had an OPS+ of 124. Other than that, he’s almost exactly an average hitter in his career. And since moving to RF, he’s been about five runs below average a year on defense. He has value, sure, but not as much as you’d think, given how Twins fans have built him up over the past three years.

So who might be interested in a slightly used Cuddyer? Could most clubs actually use an average hitter (not an average corner OF bat) to play a corner or DH spot? What if he makes $8 million a year? The answer, unsurprisingly is “no.” Here’s the breakdown, team by team:

AL East
Blue Jays
Adam Lind, Alexis Rios, and Travis Snider are just fine, thank you.

OriolesLF Felix Pie
Yeah, Cuddyer’s a better option than Pie at this point, and likely always will be. But I like Pie; he’s young and cheap and still has room to grow. A slight nod to Cuddyer here, though his contract makes it close.

Rays
The Rays have a plethora of corner men, and are unlikely to make use of Cuddyer.

Red Sox
No thanks, the Sox will stick with Jason Bay and JD Drew

Yankees
The only way Cuddyer makes sense is if Damon moves back to center, weakening the Yankee defense further. And I don’tsee that happening, do you?

AL Central
Indians
The Indians could probably use Cuddyer, as LF Ben Francisco seems more like a tweener bat in a bopper’s position. Then again, Matt LaPorta may be ready any day.

Royals
If he’s healthy and has his head on straight, RF Jose Guillen is a better bet than Cuddyer. Even for the money, I might rather have Guillen for $12 million than Cuddyer for $8 million (but probably not). In any case, the Royals aren’t about to add to their payroll commitments.

Tigers
LF Carlos Guillen, DH Marcus Thames
Carlos Guillen has been an adventure in LF, and Marcus Thames is no one’s idea of a good hitter, so maybe a Cuddyer in LF and Guillen at DH would make sense for a team that isn’t shy about handing out money to risky players (see Willis, Dontrelle), especially since it would save Guillen some wear and tear.

White Sox
Carlos Quentin, Jermaine Dye, and Jim Thome aren’t going anywhere.

AL West
Angels
DH Juan Rivera-Like Cuddyer, Rivera was last really productive in 2006. A lot really depends on whether or not Rivera is healthy, and his current 309/345/418 line suggests that he is. At $3.25 million, he’s cheaper than Cuddyer, and probably more valuable.

A’s
RF Travis Buck
Buck probably would be a better option against RHP, but Cuddyer is clearly a better overall hitter.

Mariners
LF Endy Chavez, DH Ken Griffey Jr.
Chavez may be off to a hot start, but he’s way over his head. There’s no way he maintains a .400 OBP. And Griffey has looked done for most of the season. Wladamir Balentien should probably be manning one of the spots, but Cuddyer would be an upgrade at the other.

Rangers
Even with Josh Hamilton going down, Texas has an abundance of outfielders.

NL East
Braves
LF Garret Anderson, RF Jeff Francoeur
Anderson’s on the DL and Francoeur is what he is, an out machine with some power. I’d take Cuddyer any day.
Marlins
Price plays a huge role here. Cuddyer wouldn’t supplant either Hermida or Cody Ross.

Mets
LF David Murphy/Fernando Tatis
For all their spending, the Mets could definitely use a LF. Murphy and Tatis are adequate offensively, but have made their pitchers miserable with their creative interpretation of Left Field.

Nationals
The Nats sure do suck. And perhaps they could use Cuddyer. But with one outfielder (Lastings Milledge) banished to the minors, and another (Elijah Dukes) seemingly indifferent to everything and everyone, the Nationals are inundated with corner OFers who should already be playing.

Phillies
Signing Raul Ibanez was probably a mistake, but he’s still a better option than Cuddyer.

NL Central
Astros
Cuddyer can’t match the youth, potential, and affordability of Hunter Pence, or the offensive production of Carlos Lee.

Brewers
Corey Hart and Ryan Braun are both younger and better.

Cardinals
Colby Rasmus is the future, and Ryan Ludwick seems to be for real. Rick Ankiel has great power and more upside than Cuddy, and Chris Duncan is far cheaper.

Cubs
Despite the slow start, Milton Bradley is still a better player than Cuddyer. And so is Alfonso Soriano.

Pirates
RF Brandon Moss
OK, you got me.

Reds
LF Chris Dickerson
Ditto.

NL West
Diamondbacks
Upton and Jackson are too young and talented to be supplanted by Cuddyer.

Dodgers
Manny is twice the hitter Cuddyer is, and Andre Ethier already swings a better bat and still has room for improvement.

Giants
Randy Winn is older than Cuddyer, and has less power, but he’s also got a lot more speed, has good range, and gets on base at a better clip.

Padres
Money’s tight in San Diego, and they aren’t moving Brian Giles out to bring in Cuddy.

Rockies
Brad Hawpe is pretty much a statue in RF, but his offense far outstrips Cuddyer and he’s cheaper.

So, for those of you keeping track, The Common Man counts eight teams (Reds, Pirates, Mets, Braves, Mariners, A’s, Orioles, and Tigers) for whom Cuddyer could step in, with his contract and his performance, and be an asset over what is currently in house. There’s one maybe in the group, the Indians, though that depends on how they proceed with LaPorta. That’s less than a third of the teams in the league. That's not to say, mind you, that Cuddyer isn't valuable. In fact, he is a deserving starter on the Twins, and probably their 5th best hitter. And if Cuddyer continues to flail away in 2009 (currently .216/.298/.311), he's going to play his way out of a job, and eventually The Common Man and other Twins fans are going to have to put up with another season of Delmon Young’s adventures in the outfield. I’m not sure there’s a more depressing thought in all of baseball.


Back tomorrow with some Federal League randomness.

Winning Ugly

The Common Man watched the Twins get bullied around by the Rays' Jeff Niemann, who seems to have cornered the market on ugly this year. Indeed, The Common Man wants to go so far as to call Niemann the ugliest player in the game today. He's no Don Mossi, mind you, but at 6'9", Niemann already just appears huge. Every part of him seems just slightly stretched out, including his face. His face seems to have been pulled, like very pale taffy (dude, you pitch in Tampa, get a freaking tan), becoming overly thin and long. And it's bumpy, like bread dough left unrolled and unshaped on the kitchen counter. His nose is almost a perfect triangle, jutting down from the middle of his forehead and hanging over his upper lip as though it were the old RF upper deck in Tiger Stadium. He is, by far, the gawkiest looking player in the game today, and The Common Man defies you to find uglier in the game today (in fact, he'd love it if you did).


After all, the ugly players from each decade were always The Common Man's favorite part of the Bill James Historical Abstracts. James (and his research assistants) combed through thousands of photos to find the ugliest of the ugly. Some of his favorites:

Grasshopper Jim Whitney was a decent starter at the dawn of the National League, finishing 191-204, but also displaying a lot of ability with the bat. James quotes a reporter who wrote that Whitney had "a head about the size of a wart with thge forehead slanting at an angle of 45 degrees."


Pete Vuckovich won the AL Cy Young in 1981 in the fourth year of a five year run of pretty goodness, which culminated (1982) in the Brewers' only trip to the World Series. And he managed to do all that while hiding his apparent Romulan Origins.



Fred Tenney played 17 years for the Boston Beaneaters/Doves and the New York Giants, and was the regular first baseman for the Giants in 1908 when Fred Merkle forgot to touch second base. The Common Man has plans to read Cait Murphy's Crazy '08, but is afraid he'll have to look at more pictures of Tenney's sketchy accountant mustache and haircut. If the 1908 season ever gets made into a movie, who plays Tenney? Is Steve Buscemi a given?


But The Common Man's favorite ugly player, by far, is Joe Martina, a minor league star who spent 1924 and won a World Series with the Senators, who must have sent him down because they couldn't bear to look at him anymore. This withered, smiling hobgoblin you see above was just 34 years old, and would (inexplicably) live another 28 years. How is this possible when he was clearly suffering from the advanced stages of "oh my God, is that a corpse?" in the mid-1920s?

A Weekend of Learning

This weekend was basically cancelled by extreme raininess, so The Common Man stayed inside, watched Twins games, caught random innings of other contests, thoroughly enjoyed watching Wall-E (perhaps the single sweetest movie of all time) with The Uncommon Wife and The Boy. Even stuck inside, The Common Man learned a lot:

- Whoever writes headlines for ESPN.com is either an idiot or has a hell of a sense of humor. The Common Man was mortified to read, on the MLB front page, that "Joe Mauer goes to rehab," until he clicked through to be reminded that Man Muscles had started his rehab assignment in Fort Myers.

- Speaking of ESPN, The Common Man didn't know whether to laugh or cry when the Vikings selected Florida wide receiver Percy Harvin (who failed a drug test at the NFL Combine) in the first round, and one commentator broke down the selection saying, "On the field...Harvin will have one-on-one opportunities. The off the field becomes, can the lockerroom handle that. Is there enough leadership there to say, 'a) don't ever fail a drug test that you know is coming...'" Just so we're clear...it's still ok to fail the drug tests you don't know are coming, right?

- Last week, the Twins got swept in a doubleheader in Boston, getting drubbed in both games. It should come as no surprise that the Twins play fewer doubleheaders than most teams in the league; after all, they spend half their time in the Dome. But despite their indoor digs, the Twins have played a surprising number of twinbills at home since the stadium opened in 1982. In total, 9 double headers have been played at the dome, and the Twins have gone 10-8 overall.

The first doubledip was on August 1, 1983, in which the Twins earned a split against the then-California Angels. Mike Witt gave up 6 runs but still got a complete game in the opener, easily beating Brad Havens, who went 2 innings and gave up five runs in his final game of the season (in which he'd gone 5-8 with an 8.18 ERA). In the nightcap, Rick Lysander threw a shutout for the Twins, who touched up Angels rookie Steve Brown for 5 runs in 4+ innings.

After a three year absence, the Twins played three such doubleheaders in 20 days, on August 12, 14, and 31. Both the 12th and the 14th were part of a strange five-game series with the Oakland A's, which lasted just three days. On the 12th, the Twins swept the A's behind Bert Blyleven's complete game and Mark Salas's two-run homer in the first contest, and Tom Brunansky's 8th inning game-winning solo homer in the second. On the 14th, the Twins dropped both games, first to a combined Don Sutton and Steve Ontiveros shutout, and then in Mark Portugal's major league debut. On the 31st, the Twins swept the Red Sox, again behind Blyleven's complete game (and a 9th inning comeback capped by Ron Washington's game-winning single). In the second game, Portugal pitched his second game of the year, going 5.1 innings before giving way to Pete Filson and Ron Davis (who, as always, made life interesting by giving up a two-run homer in the 9th to cut the lead to one).

The reasons for all these doubleheaders are unclear. Perhaps it's weather-related (seriously, a violent storm could prevent a visitor from flying in to the cities or a tornado warning (a majority of these series seem to take place in late-summer) could have forced the cancellation of a contest. Or perhaps there was some malfunction with the Dome itself, like a loss of internal air pressure (the Dome is held up by an artificially high pressure that pops your ears when you enter the stadium and that can literally blow you out if the doors are opened). Whatever the reason, the Oakland A's seem to have something to do with it. Of the nine doubleheaders, the Twins played the Athletics in five of them, twice in '85, once each in 1990, and 1996, and 2001. In these contests, the Twins and A's have split, each going 5-5.

In the most recent contest, the Twins and Royals split the twinbill. The Royals touched Matt Garza for 8 runs in 5 innings in the opener, but Scott Baker dominated in the nightcap, throwing 8 perfect innings before walking John Buck to lead off the 9th. Two batters later, pinch hitter (and Twin-killer) Mike Sweeney singled and Baker finished with a one-hit shutout, having faced just 29 hitters, and striking out 9.


So, The Common Man doesn't know what to make of all this. It's just a weird anomoly that seems to come up every few years in the Metrodome (though that will change next year, when the Twins will undoubtedly have to play two a lot more often). I mean, did the Astrodome have this problem???

- Fantasy owners who have started Joaquim Soria for the past week-and-a-half probably have cause for legal action against Trey Hillman. Seriously Trey, throw the nerds a bone here.

- Jacoby Ellsbury is awesome!

Random (still) Thursday: June 19, 1990, Houston vs. LA

Tonight, The Common Man almost violated his sacred vow, even though it's not even a week old. But it is still Thursday dammit, and opine he will about random baseball-ness. After work, The Common Man went out with colleagues, his first post-work bash, and almost slipped away into drunken anonymity. But he didn't. He stuck it out. He came back.

Indeed, The Common Man could have slipped away, conveniently forgetting about his writing obligations and becoming a blip in the memory...much like this week's foray into random baseballreference.com's extensive library. For whatever reason, this week The Common Man was shuttled to a June 19, 1990 contest between the Astros and the Dodgers, where former Icon Fernando Valenzuela outdueled an almost-done Mike Scott.

Indeed, the game itself has essentially been lost to history. Nobody cares about a random contest in 1990 between two also-rans. Let's see, interesting notes from the boxscore... Eric Yelding was still batting leadoff and playing short for the 'Stros, and Craig Biggio was still catching (and batting 3rd and stealing two bases!). Glenn Wilson (ugh) was the cleanup hitter. The Dodgers' lineup was pretty non-descript, except that Tim Crews (who would later die in a boating accident with Steve Olin (who also perished) and Bobby Ojeda) pitched an inning of scoreless relief.

But really, the game mostly is remarkable for its pithcers, two icons of the 1980s, both of whom were in their last run of success with their clubs. Scott had been a 2nd round draft choice of the Mets in 1976, and debuted with the club in '79. After a few seasons of mixed results, Scott was sent to the Astros for 4th outfielder Danny Heep. In Houston, Scott would perfect his split-finger fastball and, between 1985 and 1989, become one of the great pitchers in the National League. He won 86 games in those 5 seasons, peaking in 1986 with an 18-10 record and a 2.22 ERA in more than 275 IP. He also struck out 306 batters that year. But injuries took their toll. By 1990, Scott was a league average pitcher, posting a 9-13 record with a 98 ERA+, and in 1991 he threw his final two games before retiring.

Valenzuela, of course, was not just an icon but a phenomenon when he burston the scene with the Dodgers in 1981 (though he debuted in 1980). Fernando-mania has been well documented, but only really lasted until 1986. By 1987, Fernando too had become a league average starter, worn down from overuse and injuries. In 1990, Fernando was barely hanging on, suffering through his second below-average season in three. Following the season, he was released by the Dodgers and signed with the Angels, for whom he pitched two games. Afte a stint in the minors, unlike Scott, Fernando managed to work his way back, winning 13 games for the Padres in 1996, but was never the same pitcher as he was in the early 80s.

Scott and Fernando were linked in many ways, aside from this random game in 1990, toward the end of their effectiveness. Both were known, essentially, for one dominant pitch. Scott had his splitter, which he learned in 1984 from Roger Craig (according to Bill James and Rob Neyer's Guide to Pitchers. The book goes on to say that, "Immediately, he became one of the better pitchers in the league.
During the successful part of Scott’s career, and particularly in 1986, everybody who faced Scott was convinced that his best pitch was, rather than a Splitter, an illegal pitch that achieved by scuffing the ball. The Mets were especially adamant about this, but Scott was never caught in the act." Indeed, replays show that Scott was damn near unhittable through those years, and the break on his splitter was incredible, perhaps unnaturally so.

Valenzuela's screwball, meanwhile, was a pitch that become legendary for its own natural goodness. Diving down and away from right-handed batters, the pitch made Fernando tougher on them than he was on lefties (who, frankly, he was also pretty good against). Fernando apparently learned the pitch from Bobby Castillo in the late 70s in the Dodgers' system, but ended up having much more success with it than his greatly mustachioed colleague. But the screwball wears down an arm, and only extensive rest and recuperation would put life back into Fernando's left arm.

The two were also linked by their performances in 1990 and 1991. Suffering from disappointing seasons in 1990, both stuck out just two performances in '91 before being shown the door. Scott's exit was permanent, and Valenzuela was finished as an effective pitcher for five or six years before his Padres comeback.

In the game in question, Valenzuela outdueled Scott, going seven strong innings and striking out 7. His only mistake came in the 7th, when he allowed a homer to light-hitting Casey Candaele. Scott gave up five runs in six innings, but didn't pitch poorly. In the fourth inning, two errors and a fielders choice (on which no out was recorded) were bunched together, and four unearned runs came home. Then again, it's not clear he pitched well, as Scott allowed a homer to Eddie Murray in the 5th and only struck out one in the game, perhaps a sign that his shoulder would never be right again. Unlike The Common Man, who, despite a headache tomorrow morning, will be right as rain by noon and three Diet Cokes.