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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Winter 2001 | Gunn Signed, Rodriguez Traded | Hall of Fame Voting Produces No Inductees | 2001 Season Starts Monday
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THE DEFENDING CHAMPIONS ARE PREDICTED TO FINISH SECOND IN THEIR OWN DIVISION BY SIXTEEN GAMES
Preseason projections, made by the selective pool of FBL analytic experts, have been released on the eve of new 2001 baseball season: San Jose 109-53, Sacramento 93-69. Sixteen games of separation in the same division. The defending World Series champions predicted to lose nineteen more games than they did in 2000 while their first-round playoff opponents from that very October are projected to be historically dominant. Personally, I find it difficult thing to believe. Nobody who makes these projections has seen Jeon throw a bases-empty shutout in the cold at Nat Bailey Stadium. Nobody who makes these projections has watched Navarro in October. The projections are made from what the numbers say about the players, not from what those players have proven they can do when the games actually matter.
That said: the projections are not wrong to flag concerns. Lopez is still healing. Rubalcava is still seven to eight months away. Lozano has an oblique strain entering the week of Opening Day, and Cruz has a sprained knee. The defending champions are banged up in the first week of April, which is not where you want to be. They have been here before. The 2000 season was built on improvisation, adaptability, and the refusal to accept that injury lists are destiny. There is no reason to stop now.
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THE OFFSEASON TRANSACTIONS
Jose Rodriguez was traded in late January. After spending all of 2000 on the injured list with a broken elbow, Sacramento sent Rodriguez, minor league pitcher Albin Tornatore, a first-round draft pick, and an eighth-round pick to Las Vegas, receiving thirty-eight-year-old reliever Javier Gutierrez and a first-round pick in return. The organization is giving Sacramento a veteran relief arm it can use in the short term and freeing the roster of a shortstop whose health has been a question for two years. The net cost in picks essentially cancels out. What it formalizes is what the 2000 season already made obvious: Alejandro Navarro is the shortstop here for as long as he wants to be.
Chris Blevins was traded to Portland in late February along with minor league outfielder Chase Burrows and three draft picks, receiving twenty-six-year-old reliever Mike Luna, two picks, and $450,000 in cash. Blevins was a fourth outfielder with limited upside. Luna gives the bullpen a younger arm with projection. It is the kind of depth-for-depth exchange that winning organizations make efficiently in the offseason.
John Gunn was signed in late January. Four years, $1.824 million, for a twenty-five-year-old right-hander with a 52-39 career record and a 4.23 ERA. The preseason projections which are skeptical of Sacramento in general have him going 15-9 with a 3.06 ERA for 2001. If the model is right, Gunn is the second-best pitcher in the rotation and the most efficient offseason signing Sacramento has made in years.
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TEIICHI KASHIWABARA
Sacramento's left-field prospect is the sixth-best prospect in professional baseball according to the preseason rankings. Sixth overall. Not sixth in the AL, not sixth at his position sixth among every player in every organization in the FBL. He is nineteen years old. The organization has very quietly built a pipeline that now has two starting pitchers signed as free agents specifically because the current roster needs depth, and a left-field prospect who is one year younger than Victor Alvarez and ranked higher on the league's prospect list than any Sacramento player has been in recent memory.
Kashiwabara doesn't appear in the 2001 opening day roster. He is in the system, developing, which is where a nineteen-year-old should be. But his ranking tells you something about the organization's future that the current roster's age profile also suggests: Sacramento is not in a rebuilding phase, but the next generation is already arriving beneath the surface of a team still competitive enough to defend a championship.
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WHERE SACRAMENTO STANDS A POSITIONAL SURVEY
The preseason positional rankings tell a layered story about who this team is entering 2001.
At shortstop, Navarro is ranked fourth in the league which is extraordinary for a twenty-three-year-old in only his second full season as a starter. He is ahead of every shortstop in the AL except Crotwell in Milwaukee, Colson in Detroit, and Rastelli in Vancouver. At right field, Shinohara is second in the league, his Gold Glove year apparently translating into the ranking his talent has deserved for several seasons. At starting pitching, Jang ranks fourth Sacramento's new signing immediately projects as one of the better starters in the AL. The relief corps with Medina ranks first in the league, which speaks to the depth of the bullpen even after a year when Medina's availability was inconsistent.
Where Sacramento ranks below expectation: first base (18th in Alvarez, who is twenty-one and improving), center field (14th with Choi, whose defensive metrics don't match his offensive production in the rankings), and left field (13th with Mollohan, who is a professional hitter but not a positional star). These rankings represent the team's floor. Alvarez at twenty-one has years of development ahead. Choi's bat doesn't disappear because the rankings question his center-field defense.
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THE INJURY SITUATION
Lopez is listed at two months remaining on his ACL recovery. If the timeline holds, he returns sometime in June. His return won't be quiet seventy-three stolen bases and twenty home runs from the leadoff spot created an offensive profile that Sacramento has genuinely missed since October, and two months into the season the team will have been playing without him for eight consecutive months. Whether he comes back as the same player immediately or requires a re-acclimation period is impossible to predict. ACL recoveries are individual, and Lopez's athleticism should favor full recovery. The June target is worth watching.
Rubalcava is seven to eight months from returning. That puts him in the range of November 2001 at the earliest which means his 2001 season, for practical purposes, is over before it begins. Sacramento will not see Rubalcava throw a competitive pitch this year. The rotation will function without him. It has been functioning without him since the wildcard game last October.
Lozano's oblique and Cruz's knee are both short-term. Both are expected back within days. The season doesn't need to wait for either of them.
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THE WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC AND NAVARRO ON THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE
The United States won the World Baseball Classic in March. Seong-soo Kang of South Korea won MVP. The tournament's top vote-getter among position players not named Kang was, essentially, a collection of familiar names from the FBL's upper tier Crotwell, Washburn, Davis, Robitaille.
Sacramento's own Alejandro Navarro represented Mexico and finished with forty-nine MVP points. He did not win the award. He received no first-place votes, but what is really remarkable, is him playing in his first World Baseball Classic and competing in the same tournament as players who have been international representatives for five or six years at tender age of twenty-three years old. Forty-nine points means voters across twenty participating nations looked at his tournament performance and found it worth acknowledging. The player who hit .476 in the ALDS and won two games of the ALCS with late-inning home runs is now registering on a global stage. This will not be his last World Baseball Classic appearance.
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THE HALL OF FAME BALLOT NO INDUCTEES
Scott Hunt received 72.2 percent of votes in his seventh year on the ballot and fell short of the 75 percent threshold. Forrest Marrs at 66.3 percent. Eli Murguia and Brian Pullum both first-year candidates with significant vote totals, suggesting the ballot logjam will continue.
No Sacramento connections in the top tier of the ballot other than Eli Murguia, which is a curiosity given how many former Prayers have retired over the last decade. Fernando Salazar is already inducted. Strickler won't be eligible for five years. The institution will have to wait for the next generation to present its arguments.
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AROUND THE LEAGUE WHAT THE PROJECTIONS SAY
San Jose is predicted at 109-53. Suzuki is projected at 22-6 with a 2.82 ERA. Haddix at 17-7 with a 3.33. If those numbers materialize, Sacramento's division is essentially decided before the calendar turns to August. The Demons return Montemayor, who hit seven home runs against Sacramento's pitching in the ALCS alone, and a lineup that ranked eighth in AL scoring last year with room to improve.
In the NL, Milwaukee is predicted to win the Central at 103-59. Long Beach and Vancouver project as the Pacific leaders. The NL looks like a two-horse race between Milwaukee and whoever emerges from the Pacific, with Vancouver's staff Corral, Gauthier, Trillo potentially the best rotation in the NL if health cooperates.
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THE INBOX
From Linnea Bergstrφm of Sacramento's Curtis Park neighborhood, a pediatric nurse, who asks: "The projections show Sacramento finishing sixteen games behind San Jose. Should the front office be more concerned than they appear?"
The projections are based on what the models know: player aging curves, regression to the mean, the departure of Strickler and the injury to Rubalcava, and the assumption that San Jose's young roster matures at the rate its talent suggests. What the models do not know is that Sacramento went 18-23 in one-run games last year and still won 103 games. They do not know what Navarro looks like entering his age-twenty-three season with a full October of winning behind him. They do not know how Jeon performs with a healthy back and ankle and a full complement of October experience. The front office, to my read, is not unconcerned the Gunn signing and the bullpen depth additions suggest they take the gap seriously but they are not panicking, which is the correct response to a computer's preseason estimate. Sixteen games is a number in a regular season. Postseason October is a different beast. The 2000 Sacramento Prayers were predicted to win about ninety-five games. They won a hundred and three and a World Series. The models are useful starting points, not verdicts.
From Obinna Uzoma of Sacramento's Rancho Cordova neighborhood, an accountant, who asks: "The salary sheet shows the entire roster at $11.7 million in 2001. How does Sacramento compete with teams spending more than that?"
By drafting, developing, and signing players before they reach their market value. The franchise has three players signed through arbitration years at below-market rates in Navarro, Alvarez, and Jeon three of the most important contributors to last October's championship run. Lozano signed a five-year extension right after the World Series for six hundred thousand dollars per year, which is, to be direct, an extraordinary bargain for a player with five postseason home runs who just won a Gold Glove. Cruz is similarly locked in. Shinohara's five-year deal scales up toward fair market over time but is manageable. Sacramento competes on the margins of the salary structure by finding value before the market finds it, which is what the development pipeline and the scouting staff exist to do. The Kashiwabara ranking at sixth overall in the prospect list is evidence that the pipeline is working. The eleven-point-seven-million-dollar roster that just won the World Series is evidence that it has been working for several years.
From Marta Vidaković of Sacramento's Land Park neighborhood, a high school teacher, who asks: "Opening Day is Monday. Sacramento's rotation has Gunn, Cruz, Espenoza, Andretti, and Jeon. Last year's rotation had the same uncertainty entering the year. Should we expect a similar journey?"
Expect a different journey to a possibly similar destination. Last year's uncertainty was injury-driven Jeon's back and ankle, Rubalcava's wildcard exit. This year's uncertainty is talent-driven Gunn is an unknown quantity in Sacramento's system, Andretti is forty-one years old, and the back-end of the rotation is still unsettled. The good news is that Espenoza, who was arguably the best starter on the staff in the second half of 2000 and threw eight and one-third innings in a deciding ALCS game, is a legitimate front-of-rotation arm entering his age-thirty-seven season. The concerning news is that thirty-seven is thirty-seven, and the innings Espenoza threw in October will eventually register somewhere in his arm. The most useful prediction I can offer is the one supported by evidence: this organization, when challenged, finds ways to win. The rotation will have a bad month. The bullpen will cover it. The offense will carry stretches where the pitching cannot. Navarro will do something in September that makes everyone forget the bad April starts. That is what defending champions who are built correctly look like in the regular season. The journey this year will have its own shape. It has earned the right to surprise us again.
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Ninety-three wins predicted. One hundred and three delivered last year. The Seattle Lucifers arrive Monday at Sutter Health Park for Opening Day. Jung-keun Jang takes the ball to pitch for the first time in the Prayers uniform. Alejandro Lopez is two months from coming back. The 2001 Sacramento Prayers begin the defense of their championship with a sprained knee, an oblique strain, and a six-foot-one right-hander from South Korea who the computer thinks will win fifteen games.
See you at the ballpark.
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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.