MARCO'S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2016: GREAT HITTERS AND THE BIG TRADE

MARCO'S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE: 2016 GREAT HITTERS AND THE BIG TRADE

Great hitters can be divided into several categories. Sometimes a hitter is a member of more than one category. More on that later. Right now, let's talk about the basic varieties:

1/SCIENTISTS: Their bats are magic wands. They hardly ever strike out and they walk a lot because of their great batting eyes. They go the opposite way a lot for singles and they'd rather bat .330 than hit 30 homers.

EXAMPLES: Rod Carew, Pete Rose, Wade Boggs, Ichiro Suzuki (yes I know he doesn't walk as much but he fits this category otherwise), Tony Gwynn.

Of course the ultimate Scientist hitter is Ted Williams. But Ted and other scientific hitters like Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Stan Musial and George Brett transcend the category because of their power. (See below)

2/GODZILLAS: These guys go for the long ball first and don't care if they hit .240 as long as they crush 40 balls a year over the fences. They strike out a lot. Unlike the Scientists, they can be pitched to....very carefully.

EXAMPLES: Harmon Killebrew, Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt, Ralph Kiner, Frank Howard and the modern versions like Chris Davis, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Todd Frazier, Giancarlo Stanton and Nelson Cruz. (no bold highlighting for convicted PED users!)They make outs but everybody watches when they come up to the plate because they just might bust one and break up the old ballgame.

3/GODS: This category is reserved for the true Alpha Superstars of baseball lore. In addition to Ted Williams and his buddies mentioned above, they are multi-dimensional players who beat you in many ways. These are the guys who you absolutely don't want to face in a close game. Here are a few more...

EXAMPLES:

Willie Mays: he hit for a good average with lots of power and he could beat you on the bases as well. Then he'd go out and his defense would beat you.

Hank Aaron: Back in the sixties the Dodgers' great pitching staff would meet and go over the opposing team's lineup of hitters before each series and compare notes on how to pitch each hitter. When they'd play the Braves and get to Aaron there would be silence...nobody had a way to consistently get him out and nobody could ever get a

fastball by him. Ted Williams said Aaron was the most impressive fastball hitter he ever saw.

Mickey Mantle: People forget. If this guy hadn't been injured so much...if he'd taken a little bit better care of himself...if he hadn't had to play in one of the worst hitter's eras of all time...if Casey Stengel had let him steal bases...This guy might be considered the greatest all-round ball player of all time.

He was one of the fastest players in the history of baseball. He could have stolen 40-60 bases a year if they'd let him. He was also the most powerful home run hitter of his era...he's still up there with Giancarlo, McGwire and a very few others when it comes to tape measure shots. And the Mick put up batting averages like .365 and .353. He slugged over .600 six times, his on base percentage was

.421 lifetime and he finished in the top five MVP voting 9(!) times.

Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmy Foxx: the best of the old timers who established home runs as the new offensive paradigm of baseball back in the twenties and thirties. Not many hitters have ever been able to hit 35-50+ homers every year and maintain an average of .350 or above at the same time. These guys did it year after year.

CURRENT PLAYERS WHO MAY EVENTUALLY BE CONSIDERED IN THIS CATEGORY:

Joey Votto: already a scientist, he batted well over .400 the second half last year with power and lots of walks.

Paul Goldschmidt: has power, good average most years, high on base percentage and base stealing ability.

David Ortiz: probably already has made it to God-ness. His average suffered when they started using the shift on him so much. He could have hit .400 if he'd gone for singles to the left side and sacrificed his power. The opposition would have probably taken that if they could have avoided the thunder.

Albert Pujols: his recent injuries have dimmed the glow of his spectacular years in the National League when he hit.330/35+ homers/125 rbis every year.

Mike Trout: looks like an all-timer if his average gets a little higher and he strikes out a little less.

Barry Bonds: Yes he was a God. But then, so was Shiva the destroyer.

I've got one more category of great hitters for you and in a way it's the most interesting of all...

4/SAVANTS: There are a few players who are truly great hitters that just seem to have been born that way. Oh sure, somewhere along the line a Dad or an Uncle or a Coach probably gave them some hitting pointers, but they had a basic ability to do the hardest thing in sport...consistently hit the ball with power and maintain a high average and on base percentage at the same time. They aren't really scientists and they share some interesting qualities.

For instance, they seem to be mostly affable, happy-go-lucky types who are sometimes pretty flaky or even goofy. They are popular with their teammates and the press. They can be surprisingly bad defensively and most of them aren't particularly good at other aspects of the game, but Oh Lord can they hit. And most of them could hit when they were very young.

EXAMPLES:

Miguel Cabrera: I'm very glad he won that triple crown so people will remember him. That is very, very hard to do in this day and age. He's hit over 40 doubles 5 times (including a year of 50 and a year of 52) and over 30 homers 10 times. He's batted in over 100 runs 12 times...every year when he hasn't been injured. His lifetime batting average/on base/slugging? .321/.399/.562 with four titles in both average and on base and 2 in slugging (.606,.636) He strikes out a hundred times a season so he's not a scientist. He's just one of the most natural hitters ever.

Manny Ramirez: He didn't track pitchers except with his baseball memory. He'd just amble up to the plate and wait for a pitch in the zone and then just launch it...right, center or left he didn't care. He'd just uncoil with that beautiful swing that terrorized pitchers. It seemed like you should have been able to fool him more but you really couldn't. He had awesome offensive stats. Who knows how much the drugs helped him? Can't forgive him or Bonds or the others, but Jeez it was something to watch them swing the bat.

Pedro Guerrero: Remember Pedro from the Dodgers of the '80s? Lifetime OPS .850. He finished in the top 5 MVP voting 4 times. He was a disaster in the field and a bozo on the bases (even though he could run fast enough to steal 20 bases a couple of times). But when he'd come up to the plate he was just one scary right handed Dominican power hitter, even playing in a lousy hitter's park like Chavez Ravine. Injuries cut his career short. He should have done some Dh-ing in the American League. He was very popular in the press because he would say what he felt and never shirk a question. Most of the other Dodgers of that era were very reluctant to open up so the reporters always wound up around Pedro's locker because they knew they'd get some good quotes from him. Kind of like a baseball Charles Barkley.

Vlad Guerrero: Another Dominican Guerrero right-handed power hitter. Lifetime OPS .931! Batted over .300 in 13 out of 15 full seasons and hit over 30 homers 8 times. 4 years with more than 200 hits. 10 years of more than 100 ribbies.

Unlike some of these other Savants, he wasn't one-dimensional. He had years of 37 and 40 steals and had one of the two or three most powerful right field arms in baseball in his day. Vlad (they called him “The Impaler”) learned to hit by swatting bottle caps with a broomstick growing up poor in a family of nine kids in Dominica. He was famous for swinging at balls out of the strike zone but still being able to hit them with authority. He once got a hit off a pitch that bounced in front of the plate. Always well-liked as a player, he had 8 kids by 5 different women.

OLD TIMER SAVANTS:

Yogi Berra: He wasn't a league leader in average or homers but he got a lot of rbis hitting behind guys like DiMaggio, Mantle and Maris. He didn't walk a lot but almost never struck out. (Only 3 seasons out of 19 with more than 30!)One of the most famous bad-ball hitters of all time.

He would swing at anything. One time Casey Stengel dressed him down for it and told him to “Think when you're up at the plate!” So Yogi went up to bat and took three straight strikes and came back to the dugout and told Casey “I can't think and hit at the same time!”

Babe Herman: You've probably read about this Brooklyn Dodger from the '30s getting hit on the head by a fly ball and once tripling into a triple play. (Base runners were staying put but Babe kept running until three guys were on the same base.) He was considered one of the biggest clowns in the game and was laughed at during his career, but he was a 6'4” leftie hitter who had seasons with batting averages of .381 and .393 to his credit. (Admittedly in the ridiculous seasons of 1930 and 1931 when the National League was playing with the ultimate rabbit ball and the League as a whole batted over .300)

Joe Jackson: One of the Black Sox of 1919 but also one of the best hitters ever. Lifetime average .356. Consecutive years of these averages....387/.408/.395/.373. A leftie, Babe Ruth said he copied Jackson's swing and that's how he was able to hit so many homers. Jackson was kicked out of the game just when the lively ball came into vogue in 1920 or he would have hit lots more homers. As it was he hit over 20 triples 3 times.

Jackson was a simple country boy who was probably illiterate. Ty Cobb, who had befriended his fellow Southerner when Jackson first came up, did a head trip on Joe one year when they were neck and neck for the batting title. Cobb pretended to be mad at Joe for some reason and stopped talking to him. It bothered Joe so much that he slumped and lost the title. (Sounds about right for Cobb.)

More Mickey Mantle: Mick was a Baseball God who was also a Savant. He was a real country bumpkin when he came up and even though being a switch hitter implied some kind of sophisticated approach to hitting, Mantle admitted that he went up to the plate trying to hit a homer every time. (He exaggerated because I watched him lay down a perfect drag bunt once. He'd use bunts to break himself out of slumps.)

One year at the All Star Game, Ted Williams praised him for the great season Mantle was having and went into a long technical discussion of how Mantle was hitting so well. “Are you keeping your hands back longer? Are your hips coming through just before the swing? Are you seeing that breaking pitch and adjusting?”...stuff like that fascinated Scientist Ted.

Well Mantle says “Gee, I don't know Ted.” Mick starts thinking about it and winds up going into a huge slump for the rest of the season trying to figure out what technique he was using.

I could go on and on about Mickey Mantle but I won't.

Instead, I'll talk about the Big Trade at the winter meetings.

The Big Trade: Of course it's the Red Sox/White Sox trade...The White Hose send leftie Ace Chris Sale to Fenway for the top prospect in baseball (according to popular opinion) Cuban Yoan Moncada and pitching prospect Michael Kopech. (He of the 102 mph fastball) The Scarlet Stockings threw in two more prospects just to sweeten the pot.

So what about this trade? Yes the Red Sox needed another pitcher and I guess they got the best one available. They have a surfeit of lefties in their rotation with Price, Pomeranz, Rodriguez and now Sale. Somebody has to go. Still, the Red Sox want to win now and getting an Ace like Sale can only help that for the next two years or so. But what about the future? Just how good are Moncada and Kopech?

Well Kopech can bring it, no doubt. But he's been in A ball

and his control is not top notch and the Red Sox have been disappointed in their other great pitching prospects (like leftie Henry Owens who just hasn't been able to develop the control that a major league starter needs. I'm sure they would have rather traded Owens to the White Sox but no dice.)

On the whole, the Red Sox have drafted well when it comes to position players and have screwed the pooch with their young pitchers (since Lester and Buchholz in 2007). I don't think they wanted to wait around for another three years while Kopech learned control. Remember Daniel Bard? He threw fast too....he's now struggling in the St. Louis Cardinals' system.

Moncada is another story. The guy just looks like a future superstar. However, he's Cuban and hasn't played enough what with all the defecting and all. The Red Sox just blew $70 million to get the rights to Rusney Castillo...another Cuban who everybody said couldn't miss. Speed, power, defense blah blah blah. Turns out the guy has no bat speed and is average in minor league ball at best.

Well they spent $60 mil on Moncada and he's supposed to be better but how can you be sure? It's hard for these Cubans to adjust to the USA. In 19 major league at bats Moncada has struck out 12 times. He probably needs a couple more years in the high minors to figure it out. He has terrific speed and could be a great stolen base threat right now...if he could get on base. Also, the Red Sox ...if they could play him at all...were going to have to play him out of position at third instead of his natural second base. (Pedroia is too good and too important for their infield chemistry to move him.)

The question becomes...try to win with Sale right now? Or wait for the youngsters a little longer and give yourself a chance to win big two or three years from now? (When vets like Hanley Ramirez, Pedroia, Price and Pablo Sandoval will probably be on the downside of their careers)

Here's how I evaluate Moncada (who I love, really.)

WHO WILL YOAN MONCADA BE IN 3 YEARS?

1/ 5% chance he's a combo of Robbie Cano and Tim Raines (power, defense, speed and moxie...hopefully with a better hustle ethic than Cano)

2/10% chance he's Robbie Cano with more speed (who'd complain?)

3/15% chance he's Tim Raines (stolen base leader but without the great power of Cano...but still a HOF candidate)

4/40% chance he's Carl Crawford (.290/.330 on base/ .430 slug... less than twenty homers a year, less than 100 ribbies a year but a stolen base league leader...but will only be at this peak until his speed goes after about 6 years.)

5/30% chance he's Rusney Castillo (White Sox win the ultimate Xmas present...a box of dirt!)

So you've got a 30% chance Moncada is some kind of Hall of Famer and 30% he's a bust...and a 40% chance he's a much better than average player for a few years. Meanwhile Chris Sale is one of the top 10 pitchers in baseball for sure. I say the Red Sox made the right choice...but so did the White Sox. The White Sox had to break up that team and start over.

The fly in the ointment for the Red Sox is that you can't trust pitchers and their delicate arms. Sale has been pretty injury free except for a small problem early last season. But he throws funky across his body and he's skinny and he's a leftie and a hot-head. Those kinds of pitchers rarely last that long. His fastball has lost 2 or 3 mph in the last couple of years. Most Aces only have a window of 5-8 years where they truly dominate. Sale has had 5 top years. Price is already over that hump and so is Verlander...but they're still great, valuable pitchers. So is Sale. Even if he's not as dominant as he has been for the last few years, he's better than anybody else the Red Sox could have added to their starting staff short of Bumgarner or Kershaw or maybe Scherzer. And I think he's got two truly dominant years in that arm...and the Red Sox have a better chance of winning a World Series or two with him than with Moncada and Kopech.

Sale still has 3 years on a very affordable contract but you have to add in the $60 million investment in Moncada which it turns out they spent for trade bait.

If the Red Sox want to really up their chances of winning another Championship they'd grab Edwin Encarnacion for 3 years. The loss of Ortiz is huge. The middle of their lineup is just not the same and Encarnacion is the only other player out there with that knack of hitting the prime time dramatic homer. Plus, Edwin always kills the Red Sox and what if the Yankees get him?

I understand that a 5 year deal would be too much risk with a player in his mid-thirties and Boston still has to rebuild the bullpen after losing Uehara, Tazawa and Zeigler. But how much money will another title be worth to marketing in New England?

Go for the jugular, Dombrowski. And Merry Xmas Baseball Fans Everywhere!