More Proof of Jerry Manuel's Ineptitude

As if there weren't enough proof out there already, let's look at Jerry's big move of the night.

With one out in the 8th and a man on second (pitcher Adam Wainwright hit a double off Toni Stoner), Jerry brought in Pedro Feliciano to face a lefty, Skip Schumaker.

Tony Larussa countered with switch-hitting Felipe Lopez, who battled before striking out.

This brought up righthanded hitting Ryan Ludwick and Jerry's big decision.

Now most managers would have all of the numbers at their disposal to make the choice:  do I leave Feliciano in, or do I bring in a righty?

And what exactly are those numbers?

For his career Ludwick bats .286 against righthanders and .241 against lefthanders.  Now that's interesting, but wait, there's more.

In 2010 Ludwick is hitting .235 against lefty's...yup, 4 for 17...he has a .278 OBP against them.

Against righty's?  A solid .296...8 for 27 with a .345 OBP.

It would appear to be a simple decision--keep Feliciano in the game.

Jerry's call?  Bring in the righty.

This is very typical of the problem with Jerry Manuel...he only thinks in terms of righty vs righty and lefty vs lefty.  He doesn't appear to have the capacity to think past the basic left-right matchup to use statistics and pure fact.

We see this when he constructs his lineup...he desperately pencils in names to go lefty, righty, lefty, right regardless of starting pitcher vs player tendencies, actual performance, and historical matchup.

Look, I beat up on Jerry as much as the next guy, but when the numbers give you an advantage, you take them.

In this case the numbers clearly favored keeping in Feliciano, but as we know, Jerry is not a "numbers guy".

So we wind up with another Mets loss, and another pin for the voodoo doll.

Historic Times, Baseball and the Negro Leagues

It's hard to gauge baseball's true impact on desegregation. Let's face facts, baseball was purposefully and willfully segregated.

In fact, teams were still segregated until 1959, when Pumpsie Green became the last "first" black player to make his debut, finally breaking the barrier for the last holdout team: the widely scorned Boston Red Sox.

It's amazing, and shameful, that the Red Sox couldn't find a black player for their roster until more than 12 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

Each team's first black player and debut date:

Player	Team	Date
Jackie Robinson	Brooklyn Dodgers, NL	April 15, 1947
Larry Doby	Cleveland Indians, AL	July 5, 1947
Hank Thompson	St. Louis Browns, AL	July 17, 1947
Monte Irvin	New York Giants, NL	July 8, 1949
Hank Thompson
Sam Jethroe	Boston Braves, NL	April 18, 1950
Minnie Miñoso	Chicago White Sox, AL	May 1, 1951
Bob Trice	Philadelphia Athletics, AL	Sept. 13, 1953
Ernie Banks	Chicago Cubs, NL	Sept. 17, 1953
Curt Roberts	Pittsburgh Pirates, NL	April 13, 1954
Tom Alston	St. Louis Cardinals, NL	April 13, 1954
Nino Escalera	Cincinnati Reds, NL	April 17, 1954
Chuck Harmon
Carlos Paula	Washington Senators, AL	Sept. 6, 1954
Elston Howard	New York Yankees, AL	April 14, 1955
John Kennedy	Philadelphia Phillies, NL	April 22, 1957
Ozzie Virgil, Sr.	Detroit Tigers, AL	June 6, 1958
Pumpsie Green	Boston Red Sox, AL	July 21, 1959

As Mets fans we take great pride in the tribute paid to Jackie Robinson in Citi Field. New York has always been one of the most, if not the most, progressive cities in the world. Mets fans, many of whom have a direct lineage to the old Brooklyn Dodgers, cannot wait to see the "tribute to Jackie" when the stadium opens in just a few months. I am personally ecstatic that the Mets chose this beautiful venue for this wonderful and deserving tribute.

But for all the change, all the tributes, and all the self-glorifying that occurs when baseball gives itself a collective pat on the back, there are still issues worth discussing.

Baseball is a different sport now and all clubhouses feature a variety of colors, religions, races, and nationalities. There is one disturbing trend, however, that's been well documented: there are fewer and fewer black players. In fact, only 8.3% of major leaguers are African-American, down from 19% just a decade ago. And we see our two most recent Hall of Fame inductees are both black players, now seemingly from a different era, but if I asked you today, "which current African-American ballplayers are Hall of Famers?", I bet your list wouldn't be very long.

Football, on the other hand, has seen a dramatic rise in the number of African-American players. Of more interest, however, is how little attention is played to the desegregation on professional football.

At its inception in 1920, the American Professional Football Association had several African-American players (a total of thirteen between 1920 and 1933). Fritz Pollard and Bobby Marshall were the first black players in what is now the NFL in 1920. Pollard became the first black coach in 1921. However, by 1932 the subsequent National Football League had only two black players, and by 1934 there were none. This disappearance of black players from the NFL effectively coincided with the entry of one of the leading owners of the league, George Preston Marshall. Marshall openly refused to have black athletes on his Boston Braves/Washington Redskins team, and reportedly pressured the rest of the league to follow suit. The NFL did not have another black player until after World War II.

In the NFL, when the Cleveland Rams wanted to move to Los Angeles, it was stipulated in their contract with the Los Angeles Coliseum that they had to integrate their team, so they signed two UCLA teammates, Woody Strode and Kenny Washington, who were playing semi-pro ball in the area in 1946. Still, Marshall was quoted as saying "We'll start signing Negroes when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites." In spite of this open bias, Marshall was elected to the NFL's Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963. As part of his "qualifications"' for enshrinement, the hall says: "Marshall was totally involved in all aspects of his team's operation and endured his share of criticism for not integrating his team until being forced to do so in 1962." The Redskins had no black players until they succumbed to the threat of civil-rights legal action by the Kennedy administration. The Redskins eventually came through though signing Bobby Mitchell and two other African American players by 1962. In 1946, the Cleveland Browns of a rival pro football league, the All-America Football Conference, signed two black players: Marion Motley and Bill Willis.

Even when the NFL did sign black players, poor treatment was evident. Reportedly, black players routinely received lower contracts than whites in the NFL, while in the American Football League there was no such distinction based on race.[1] Position segregation was also prevalent at this time. According to several books such as the autobiography of Vince Lombardi, black players were stacked at "speed" positions such as Defensive Back but excluded from "intelligent" positions such as Quarterback and Center. However despite the NFL's segregationist policies, after the league merged with the more tolerant AFL in 1970, more than 30% of the merged league's players were African American. Today, recent surveys have shown that the NFL is approximately 57-61% non-white (this includes African Americans, Polynesians, non-white Hispanics, Asians, and people that are mixed race.) Conversely, the American Football League actively recruited players from small colleges that had been largely ignored by the NFL, giving those schools' black players the opportunity to play professional football. As a result, for the years 1960 through 1962, AFL teams averaged 17% more blacks than NFL teams did.[2] By 1969, a comparison of the two league's championship team photos showed the AFL's Chiefs with 23 black players out of 51 players pictured, while the NFL Vikings had 11 blacks, of 42 players in the photo. The American Football League had the first black placekicker in U.S. professional football, Gene Mingo of the Denver Broncos; and the first black regular starting quarterbacks of the modern era, Marlin Briscoe of the Broncos and James Harris of the Buffalo Bills. Willie Thrower was a back up quarterback who saw some action in the 1950s for the Chicago Bears.

Football has a very interesting history of race relations, but it is rarely spoken of, especially in comparison to other sports.

And that brings us back to baseball. While baseball celebrates itself over the next few days as an institution that brought about change, it has also come full circle. It was an elitist institution that prohibited blacks from playing in its league, and now has seemingly lost the allure it once had for young black athletes. Did you know that in 2005, the Houston Astros reached the World Series without one black player on the roster?

The MLB Network is airing a special tribute to the Negro Leagues tomorrow night with the debut documentary Pride and Perseverance: The Story of the Negro Leagues, airing at 9:00 p.m. ET on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Monday, January 19. This never before aired one-hour special is narrated by Hall of Famer and Negro Leagues advocate Dave Winfield. Debuting on the eve of President-elect Barack Obama's historic inauguration, the documentary will depict the history of African Americans in the Negro Leagues and Major League Baseball.

It will feature the history of Negro Leagues baseball players in the early half of the century leading up to the modern era's African-American Major League Baseball players. Produced by Major League Baseball Productions, Pride and Perseverance: The Story of the Negro Leagues, will showcase rarely seen footage from the 1920s through 1950s that feature the birth of the Negro Leagues, and that depict both the struggles endured and milestones achieved by its players.

Today begins a great and historic week in our country's history. We start with Martin Luther King Day tomorrow, followed by the swearing in of our first African-American President.

And I still ponder baseball, always baseball. What if Jackie Robinson didn't break the color barrier in 1947? How would the forces of change have shifted to the inevitable? Why do we glorify baseball and the its impact on desegregation when it, for so long, was partially responsible for the separation of equals?

At the end of the day we are all better off for what happened those 62 years ago--a lifetime ago--but we haven't fully come to grips with the true meaning, and we probably never will.

Late Bloomers

My good friend Andy the Lawyer penned an excellent article about "Late Bloomers" and makes a great point about our current outfield.

Enjoy!

I started this piece on Tatis a week ago, but it seems even downright prescient now, after he's hit homeruns in consecutive games.

When Tatis was 24, he hit 34 HR and drove in 107 RBI, with a 139 OPS+, for the Cardinals. Despite that, he was never given 500 at-bats in a season ever again, and by 2008 he was a minor leaguer who hadn't played in the majors in two years, a guy generally not expected to do anything and who many complained about getting a call up when he came up to fill in due to injuries.

Suddenly, he has become a key part of the Mets offense, slugging away at a .306/.361/.479 clip with 6 HR and 24 RBI going into today's game, when he went 3 for 4 with a HR, 2 doubles, and 2 more RBI.

The question for Mets fans is, "what do we really have in Tatis?" Is he simply a guy on a hot streak, or has he "got it" at the youthful age of 33?

The tendency in baseball circles is to assume that anyone who is ever going to be a good player will do so by 25 years old or so (maybe longer in the case of pitchers, especially lefties). I think that comes from the way scouts assess prospects, based on how old they are at which levels. And the truth is, if you are going to have a hall-of-fame career, you better get started by 24 years old, since its basically required if you are going to hit the accumulation milestones required for the Hall. But so-called "late bloomers" are seen ALL THE TIME in baseball, baseball "experts" just pretend that it doesn't happen.

Remember Rick Reed? To call Reed a "journeyman" when he came to the Mets would have been charitable. In 1997 he was 32 years old, blackballed as a scab for playing during the strike, a guy with a total of 266.4 innings pitched in a 8 season career. His prior two years, he had only 8 appearances with a 5.90 ERA.

He then proceeded to be a dependable #2 starter, generally one of the best pitchers in baseball over the next two years, and had 2 all-star game appearances in 4.5 seasons as a Met. His career numbers at Shea, when all was said and done, were 467.2 innings pitched to a sterling 3.14 ERA, with only 426 hits and 70 walks allowed, versus 346 strikeouts. He was a great Met.

And I'm sure we all remember Carl Everett, who only showed flashes of power (and temper) as a Met but whose offensive game didn't really come around until his 7th MLB season, in Houston (the temper stayed, sadly).

And I don't think you can't chalk up those examples to the steroids era, as it still happens today. How about Ryan Ludwick? After hitting .220 in both 2004 and 2005 (and not getting a MLB at bat in 2006) he winds up in St. Louis, and in 2008, at 29 years old, he's got 23 HR and 70 RBI at just beyond the halfway point.

Expecting Tatis to play 3 more years at this pace is foolhardy - I'm not advocating signing him to a long-term contract based on 150 at-bats. But is it unreasonable to think that, for this year, he's our best bet to get power out of an outfield position? Its not crazy to imagine that this burst isn't an "illusion" as much as a veteran guy finally figuring out how to hit a bit better.

His .840 OPS+ this year is better than Raul Ibanez, Ken Griffey Jr., and most of the other options folks discuss as potential trade targets (Jason Bay is better, though).

If Church is done for the year, the comparisons are moot, since there will be plenty of at-bats for Tatis. But if he comes back, its not clear that giving Tatis' at-bats to Raul Ibanez isn't a downgrade for this team.

-- Andy