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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November – December 2000 | Brian Strickler Retires | Three Sacramento Gold Gloves | Looking Toward 2001
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BRIAN STRICKLER RETIRED WITH 220 WINS AND THREE WORLD SERIES RINGS IN HIS POCKET
The timeline is perfect in the way only a career like Strickler's could produce: on November 1st, he exercised his opt-out. On November 1st, he retired. The opt-out was a formality — a mechanism that existed to allow him to negotiate or leave — and his answer was that there was nowhere to go and nothing left to prove. He had won in October. He was thirty-nine years old. He put down the ball.
Brian "Kodak" Strickler. 220-133. 3.49 ERA. Two National League Cy Young Awards. One American League Cy Young. Three World Series rings. A 1997 Pitching Triple Crown with Sacramento that now sits in the same trophy case as everything else. And a 2000 season that was maddening, unpredictable, statistically puzzling, and ultimately crowned — because Strickler won the game that sent Sacramento home alive in the ALDS, won Game Two of the ALCS on five days' rest without a single walk, and pitched six and one-third innings in Game Four of the World Series before the bullpen undid him in the ninth.
His ERA was 4.64. His record was 17-3. These things coexisted in the same person for seven months and the people who covered him this year either came to accept it or lost their minds trying. Strickler himself, per his personality file, was never one to rest on his laurels. Low financial ambition. High work ethic. A Sparkplug who spent his career in every phase of it — Las Vegas, Nashville, Sacramento — understanding what it takes to throw a baseball effectively for nine innings and doing it seventeen times a year for a decade and a half.
He was not the ace. He was not the closer. He was the pitcher you needed when the start after the disaster needed to be functional, and every team needs that pitcher, and most teams aren't fortunate enough to have one who also has two Cy Youngs and a Triple Crown on his wall at home. Sacramento was fortunate. We all knew it. We didn't say it loudly enough. And now his time has come and he's done.
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LOZANO STAYS
When Daniel Lozano exercised his opt-out on November 1st — the same day Strickler announced his retirement, a day that started poorly for Sacramento fans who hadn't yet read the fine print — the reasonable fear was that the player who hit five World Series home runs and thirty-two home runs in the regular season and won a Gold Glove at third base and is twenty-three years old had priced himself out of Sacramento's range.
He had not. The five-year extension for $3,000,000 makes Lozano a Prayer through 2005, which means the franchise locked in its World Series hero for the next stage of his development at a figure that feels, even now, like an extraordinary bargain. Lozano exercised the opt-out because that is what you do when you have leverage. He stayed because Sacramento is where he belongs, where the organization knows what it has, and where the third-base job is his without competition for the foreseeable future. The Gold Glove announcement — more on that shortly — arrived after the signing was already done. The franchise got ahead of the market. That happens when an organization is paying attention.
Shinohara also signed a five-year extension through 2005. Vic Cruz signed for three years. Musselman for four years. The core of this championship roster is locked in.
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THREE GOLD GLOVES
Lozano at third base. Choi in left field. Shinohara in right field. Three Gold Gloves from the 2000 AL Gold Glove panel for the World Series champions, and every single one of them is deserved.
Lozano's is the one that means the most narratively — the same player who hit five home runs in the World Series and made the defensive plays that Sacramento needed to keep Cruz's ground-ball tendencies alive was also the best defensive third baseman in the American League this year. That combination of offensive production and defensive recognition at the same position in the same season is not common. It is what makes him one of the most complete third basemen in this league and why that five-year extension felt, to anyone watching, less like an overpay and more like a steal.
Choi in left field won a Gold Glove in the year he also hit thirty-two home runs and drove in a hundred and eleven runs. His throwing arm — the one that has the one assists entry in half these box scores — is as much a weapon as his bat. Shinohara in right field has been the most quietly excellent right fielder in the American League for four consecutive seasons, and the panel finally said so explicitly.
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THE AWARDS LANDSCAPE
Jorge Jaime won the American League MVP unanimously, which is the correct result delivered with the appropriate emphatic clarity. He hit .400. He hit seventy-eight home runs. He drove in a hundred and seventy-eight runs. There are no arguments. The only notable footnote in the voting is that Alejandro Lopez received a single first-place vote, which is a remarkable acknowledgment of what Lopez produced before the ACL ended his October. Twenty home runs, seventy-three stolen bases, a .297 average from the leadoff spot — someone on the voter panel decided, correctly, that what Lopez did before Game Three of the ALDS belonged in the conversation. He didn't win the award and couldn't have with Jaime in the same league. But one writer looked at the season and said: that man deserved a first-place vote. I agree.
Robitaille won the AL Cy Young unanimously. Twenty wins, a 3.47 ERA, two hundred and thirty-three strikeouts. The best pitcher in the American League, dispatched from the postseason by San Jose in five games. One of the stranger disconnects between regular-season excellence and October outcome in recent memory.
Andy Benson finished second in the Rivera Award voting behind Tabone of Detroit, with one first-place vote. Thirty-nine saves, 2.24 ERA, the best closer in the Sacramento organization's recent history — and second place in the league. Tabone had thirty-nine saves of his own with a 2.14 ERA. This was simply the year the American League produced two remarkable closers and one of them had to finish second.
Victor Alvarez finished fourth in Rookie of the Year voting. He is twenty-one. He won the ALCS MVP. He is locked in on a forty-three thousand dollar automatic renewal, which means the franchise got an ALCS MVP performance for salary-cap purposes at minor league rates. The award went to Masuda of Charlotte, who had a fine season. Alvarez will have other Novembers.
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JUNG-KEUN JANG
The organization has spent three weeks since the World Series answering a simple question: who replaces Rubalcava's starts in 2001? The answer arrived on December 22nd in the form of a five-year, $6.36 million contract for Jung-keun Jang, a right-handed starter who is 91-65 career with a 4.43 ERA. The signing cost Sacramento a first-round pick in compensation, which is a meaningful price for a club that has two prospects in the league's top ten.
What Jang provides: a durable innings-eater with a legitimate career winning percentage and the ability to make thirty-plus starts a year. What he is not: Rubalcava. The 4.43 career ERA slots him as a solid mid-rotation option — in the same tier as Strickler was in recent years or Cruz when he's pitching well, rather than the front-of-rotation presence Rubalcava represented before the rotator cuff ended his season. The rotation entering 2001 looks like Espenoza, then Jang, then Cruz, then Andretti if healthy, then Jeon. That is a functional major-league starting staff. It is not the rotation that won championships in 1994, 1995, and 1997. It does not need to be all of those things at once. It needs to be good enough, consistently, to give the offense a chance to do its work. On paper, it can be.
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THE PROSPECTS
Edwin Borjas ranked eighth in the FBL's top prospect list. Edwin Zamora ranked tenth. Both are right-handed pitchers in the Sacramento system. Both are twenty years old. A franchise that just won the World Series with a rotation held together by prayers, patellar tendinitis, and Ji-hoon Jeon's best month has two of the ten best pitching prospects in professional baseball in its development pipeline. The future of this organization is not just the players who delivered in October. It is also these two, and whoever develops around them over the next three to four years.
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THE INBOX
From Nkechi Adeyemi of Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood, a social worker, who asks: "How do you sum up Brian Strickler's career for someone who only watched the 2000 season?"
The 2000 season is not the summary — it is the final chapter, and final chapters require context. Strickler was, for the stretch from roughly 1991 through 1997, one of the ten best pitchers in professional baseball. Two Cy Youngs, a Triple Crown, a 1997 season in which he produced a 0.91 WHIP and a 2.31 ERA that remains one of the finest individual pitching performances this franchise has ever seen. He was a strikeout pitcher in his prime — leading the league in K's four consecutive seasons, hitting 257 strikeouts in 1994 — who gradually evolved into a pitcher who got through innings on intelligence and command as the velocity of youth left him. The 2000 version, at 4.64 ERA, was the most uneven of his career. It was also the version that started a must-win postseason game after a disastrous ALDS, walked off the mound against Vancouver in the World Series tied at two, and still finished with a ring. Plenty of pitchers have better 2000 seasons on paper. None of them have three rings and two Cy Youngs and a career ERA under 3.50 and a Triple Crown and a game score of 65 in a World Series start at the age of thirty-nine.
From Petros Stavridis of Sacramento's Arden-Arcade neighborhood, a restaurant owner, who asks: "Lozano opted out and re-signed for $3 million over five years. Did Sacramento underpay him?"
Yes, probably, and Lozano knows it, and the organization knows it, and the deal still got done — which tells you something about the player and something about the franchise. A twenty-three-year-old who just hit five World Series home runs, won a Gold Glove, and is improving at every phase of the game could have tested the market and found a team willing to pay considerably more than $600,000 per year. The fact that he didn't suggests he either believes in what Sacramento is building well enough to accept below-market value in the short term, or was advised by someone that stability and contention environment outweigh pure salary at his stage of development, or simply prefers Sacramento to the alternatives. All three of those explanations reflect well on the organization. They should not produce complacency. When the five-year deal expires, Lozano will be twenty-eight and at the peak of his value, and Sacramento will need to answer the question again at a substantially higher number. The discount is real. It is also temporary.
From Saoirse O'Callaghan of Sacramento's Land Park neighborhood, a librarian, who asks: "The rotation loses Strickler to retirement, Rubalcava to a torn rotator cuff, and adds Jang. Is the 2001 pitching staff good enough to defend the title?"
Good enough to compete, yes. Good enough to guarantee another October run, no, and that second answer is true of every team in every year. What the 2001 rotation has going for it: Espenoza, who is the best pitcher Sacramento has had since Rubalcava's peak and who finished 2000 with the kind of decisive performance — eight and one-third innings in a deciding game — that suggests his ceiling is real and accessible under the right conditions. Cruz, who beat a hundred-and-four-win Detroit twice in the postseason and whose 5.00 regular season ERA seems almost disconnected from his October self. Andretti, who is forty-one years old and has patellar tendinitis and who is also the person who threw seven innings in the clinching game of the World Series, so perhaps we should stop underestimating him. Jeon, whose 3-2 October record argues more compellingly for his abilities than his 0-4 regular season record argued against them. And Jang, who is durable and professional and slots in as the innings-eater a rotation needs to function over one hundred and sixty-two games. The question entering 2001 is not whether Sacramento can compete for October. It is whether the rotation can produce quality starts consistently enough that the offense — which should be exceptional again with Lopez returning from the ACL and Navarro and Lozano and Alvarez all one year older — can do what it did in 2000. The answer is probably yes. Probably is what the offseason gives you. October gives you something else.
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Three Gold Gloves. Five-year extensions for Lozano and Shinohara. Jang signed. Strickler's retirement. Rubalcava healing. Lopez healing. Navarro twenty-three years old in the spring. The Sacramento Prayers are defending champions. We begin again in April.
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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.