THE HOT CORNER
Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL
By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast
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April 7, 1997 | Spring Training Edition | 1997 Season Preview | The Prayers Remade and Reassembled
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ST. CLAIR IS GONE, RUBALCAVA HAS THE FLU, AND THE SEASON STARTS MONDAY WITH A LOT OF QUESTIONS THAT WERE NOT HERE IN FEBRUARY
Let me start with what I know for certain. Jordan Rubalcava is on the injured list with the flu. He will miss the first two weeks of the season. The man who won the American League Cy Young Award five months ago, the pitcher who led all of baseball in ERA with a 2.85, the thirty-four-year-old from Cabimas who went twenty-one and seven and was the best pitcher on the planet for six months — he has the flu and will not take the mound on Opening Day.
Danny St. Clair was traded to San Jose on April 5th for a twenty-five-year-old pitcher named Albin Tornatore and thirty-eight thousand dollars. The fans were notified of this through the customary channels and their response was, as documented in the official fan interest report, a noticeable decrease in enthusiasm. I don't blame them. St. Clair went eleven and seven with a 4.25 ERA last year. He was the fifth starter on a rotation that went first in every pitching category in the American League. His departure leaves a gap that the organization has decided to fill from within.
What remains: a Cy Young winner with influenza, a rotation being rebuilt around him, a twenty-two-year-old who won the unanimous Rookie of the Year award, a thirty-seven-year-old shortstop that the actuarial tables have been wrong about for four consecutive years, and a franchise that came within one series of a third consecutive championship and believes it can do it again.
The season opens Monday at Cathedral Stadium against Seattle. Rubalcava will not be there. Someone else will take his spot. The Hot Corner is paying close attention to exactly who that is.
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THE OFFSEASON TRANSACTIONS — WHAT HAPPENED AND WHY IT MATTERS
The rotation
The starting staff entering 1997: Strickler, Andretti, Espenoza, and some combination of new arrivals rotating behind them while Rubalcava recovers. Art "Piss-off-Art" Rutgers — re-acquired January 15th from St. Louis in exchange for minor league southpaw Masakatsu Suzuki, outfield prospect Kevin White, and a third-round draft pick — is a twenty-five-year-old left-hander on a minor league contract. Vic Cruz, twenty-eight, is in the active roster listing as a starter. Mario Jimenez, twenty-nine, is listed as well at seventy thousand dollars.
The honest assessment: the depth behind the top three is meaningfully thinner than it was on October 1st. St. Clair was exactly what you want in a fifth starter — durable, competitive, occasionally dominant, never disastrous over a full season. His 4.25 ERA was the weakest in the rotation but held up across seven months. What the organization received in exchange — Tornatore and thirty-eight thousand dollars — is not a comparable return in October terms. It is a organizational management decision that shed a costly contract of an aging player and brought club's finances back in to positive territory. The baseball result is that the rotation enters April with a depth question it did not have in March.
What makes this survivable: Strickler, Andretti, and Espenoza combined for fifty-three wins last year. The computer projection system has all three of them producing similar lines in 1997 — Strickler at seventeen and ten with a 3.12 ERA, Andretti at eighteen and nine, Espenoza at eighteen and seven, the two of them sharing a projected 3.12 and 3.15 ERA respectively. Those are the numbers the rotation needs to produce for the rest to not matter.
The bullpen
Mike Scott — the long reliever who appeared across high-leverage middle innings all year — was traded to Las Vegas on April 7th with minor league arm Frank Aguilar for outfield prospect Bryant Busher and two hundred and ninety thousand dollars. Chris Ryan, who appeared in forty-seven games and was occasionally the bridge arm when Benson was unavailable, went to Columbus in the four-player package that also included Calderon, Burns, and a first-round pick, in exchange for Bert Hernandez, a first-round pick, and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The cumulative bullpen departures: Benson (shoulder, out until late 1997 at best given the five-to-six-month timeline), Scott (traded), Ryan (traded), St. Clair (traded from the rotation). The arms that remain in the active bullpen: Lawson, Gonzalez, Prieto, and Jamie Roberto — acquired from Cleveland in the March 10th deal for minor league right-hander Katsuhiro Ryu and outfielder Jim Carlino plus eight hundred and twenty thousand dollars in cash. Roberto is twenty-six with a career ERA that I do not find reassuring at 5.35, but the acquisition represents organizational recognition that the bullpen needed bodies.
Lawson is six and zero lifetime. He is the best non-closer arm on this staff and the Hot Corner expects him to operate in genuine setup capacity in April while the rotation situation clarifies. The question I am tracking: if the rotation requires four or five arms through June while Rubalcava recovers and Jimenez or Cruz establishes a fifth-starter role, does the bullpen have the depth to function without Scott and Ryan? The answer is probably yes in April and possibly problematic in August.
The infield
Scott Crook, twenty-five, arrived March 10th from San Antonio in the deal that sent minor league third baseman Mauricio Laureano, minor league right-hander Marco Martinez, and a first-round draft pick south. Crook is listed at thirty-eight thousand on a minor league contract with what appears to be a clear competitive pathway at second base. Cruz is twenty-nine, still second in the American League at his position by team ranking, and remains the starter. Crook is organizational depth and a developmental bet.
Rodriguez is healthy and under contract at one hundred and eighty-seven thousand after winning the salary arbitration case. He won a Gold Glove. The hip held through October. He is twenty-seven years old. Lozano is twenty-six and coming off twenty-seven home runs. The corner infield is legitimately deep.
Musco is thirty-seven. The Hot Corner will present a spring training article without acknowledging this fact. He is thirty-seven years old, listed at one hundred and forty pounds, and the career statistics table that now accompanies the roster shows sixty-six career WAR and three hundred and fifty-seven career home runs and the kind of line that belongs on a Hall of Fame ballot. What it does not show is how long he can keep doing it. The Hot Corner's honest assessment: 1996 was the most productive statistical season of Musco's career. Thirty-one home runs and one hundred and eight RBI at thirty-six. That level of production is not the expectation for 1997 at thirty-seven. The expectation is that he remains the best available shortstop on this roster, plays his games, and manages what he manages. Alejandro Navarro is the third-ranked prospect in all of baseball at nineteen years old. He plays shortstop. The organization knows what it has in the system.
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WHAT THE PRESEASON PROJECTIONS TELL US
The simulation projections have Sacramento winning one hundred games and the AL West by twelve games over San Jose. The Hot Corner treats these projections as data, not gospel, but notes the following specific items worth watching.
Detroit is projected at one hundred and nine wins. The Preachers won ninety-seven last year and the projection system believes they are significantly better this year. Gonzalez is twenty-two and seven with a 3.75 projected ERA. Colson is projected for ninety-two stolen bases at shortstop. That is a specific offensive profile the Hot Corner has not seen in an ALDS opponent before. The projection has Detroit leading the AL Central by sixteen games over Columbus, which would be the largest division margin in the league.
Columbus is projected at ninety-three wins with Aguilar projected for forty-nine home runs. The team that swept the World Series and beat Sacramento four to two in the ALCS lost nothing obvious from its roster. Flores is still in that rotation. The Hot Corner has spent five months thinking about Rich Flores and still does not have a clean answer to the plate discipline question that defined last October.
The pitching projection table lists Strickler, Andretti, and Espenoza all among the top ten starters in the American League by projected ERA. St. Clair appears — as a San Jose Demon now, which is still slightly jarring to type — with a projected 3.98 ERA at thirty-three years old. The Hot Corner wishes him well and notes that this is the specific kind of transaction that produces complicated feelings for longtime followers of an organization.
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THE PROSPECT SITUATION
Alejandro Navarro is the third-ranked prospect in all of baseball. He is nineteen years old, plays shortstop, and is listed as the twelfth-ranked organizational prospect in the shortstop category overall, which suggests he is generating significant national attention. The system also lists Tim Van Ham as the second-ranked center field prospect in the league, Pat Chambers as the top closer prospect in the entire FBL, and Ji-hoon Jeon as the ninth-ranked starting pitcher prospect.
The Hot Corner wants to be direct about what this means: Sacramento in 1997 is a win-now organization — the team focus line confirms this — that also has the prospect infrastructure of a franchise that does not need to sacrifice the future for the present. That combination is rare. It is also fragile in the specific way that all roster-juggling is fragile, which is that the trades made this winter cost the organization first-round picks and specific prospects whose value may not be apparent for two or three years.
The net assessment: the organization chose 1997 wins over 1999 upside in several transactions. The Hot Corner's view is that this is the correct choice for a roster with Rubalcava at thirty-four and Musco at thirty-seven and a window that does not stay open indefinitely.
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THE INBOX — SPRING TRAINING EDITION
From Nadia Hollingsworth of Sacramento's Curtis Park neighborhood, a forensic accountant who spends her professional life finding discrepancies in numbers that other people declared resolved and who has, she says, applied this skill to reading the winter transaction log with considerable unease, who asks: "Net assessment — are we better or worse than October 1996?"
Nadia, honestly, slightly worse on paper and possibly better in specific ways that don't appear in the transaction log. The rotation is thinner in depth. The bullpen has lost Scott and Ryan and is waiting for Benson to return from shoulder surgery. Against that: Strickler, Andretti, and Espenoza all project better than they finished in 1996. Rodriguez is healthy at twenty-seven with a Gold Glove. Choi is twenty-two going into his second full year. The nucleus is excellent. The question is whether the supporting cast — Jimenez, Cruz, Rutgers, Roberto, Tornatore — can hold the rotation and bullpen together through April and May while Rubalcava recovers. My answer: probably. Not certainly.
From Mattias Bergstrom of Roseville, a furniture restorer who has spent twenty years returning damaged things to their original condition and who says he has learned that the most important step in any restoration is an accurate diagnosis of what is actually wrong, who asks: "The Flores problem. Anything new?"
Mattias, no. The Hot Corner has been watching for evidence that the Sacramento front office has addressed this through lineup construction adjustments or a specific scouting-driven plate approach against offspeed-heavy pitchers. The roster as constructed does not obviously address it. The team's approach to Flores in the regular season was the same pull-heavy first-pitch swing pattern that produced soft contact in October. What might actually change it: Choi, who is left-handed and showed in the ALCS that his approach can adapt to different arm angles. Lopez, who takes more pitches and draws more walks than any other starter in this lineup. Whether those two players represent a structural counter to Flores in a seven-game ALCS is something the Hot Corner will document as the season provides opportunities to observe.
From Hasmik Papazyan of Sacramento's Arden neighborhood, a music therapist who works with elderly patients and who says that the right song at the right moment can restore something in a person that nothing else can reach, who asks: "How do we feel about the Rubalcava flu situation?"
Hasmik, the flu is recoverable. The Hot Corner has documented Rubalcava across four seasons and the one consistent finding is that his arm holds up, his mechanics are sound, and short-duration illnesses do not carry the same risk profile as the throwing-arm and rotator cuff injuries that end careers. He will be back in two weeks. The concern is not the flu — it is the first two weeks of the season on the road against Seattle and San Jose without the Cy Young winner who led baseball in ERA. Andretti or Strickler starts Game One. The rotation cycles without its anchor. That is manageable. It is not ideal.
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The 1997 season opens Monday at Cathedral Stadium. Seattle arrives first. The rotation will manage without Rubalcava for approximately two weeks while he recovers. The Hot Corner will document the opening series and file a first article of the season after the Seattle three-game set.
Choi is twenty-two. Navarro is nineteen. Rubalcava will be back by the end of April. Musco is thirty-seven and has already made the Hot Corner wrong about what that means for three years running.
Let's see what 1997 brings.
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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.