I’m going to break the concept–already?–because the next-most-durable Cardinal saddens me that much. After Pujols and Eckstein, the player with the most plate appearances was Aaron Miles. Here’s the thing about Aaron Miles: he’s not a good baseball player, but this is the second year in a row he’s played more than 130 games and picked up more than 400 at-bats. Miles’s 2006 and 2007 seasons are a good example of the trouble with using batting average to value a player’s offense:

  G   AB    H  2B  3B  HR  BB   K   BA  OBP  SLG  ISO
135  426  112  20   5   2  38  42 .263 .324 .347 .084
133  414  120  16   1   2  25  40 .290 .328 .348 .058

Miles’s power dropped from low–but a career high–to shockingly low. Among players with at least 400 plate appearances he was second most-punchless in the league, behind Whiteyballin’ Angels rookie Reggie Willits. Since 2000 it was the nineteenth most-punchless such season (which David Eckstein actually topped twice, in 2004 and 2006.) In any case, despite his much-ballyhooed batting average, he had the same not-a-starter season he had in 2006. Combine that with his utter lack of range on defense–ZiPS has him at average at 2B and poor at shortstop, and he doesn’t exactly help his case with his, uh, smooth subjectively-observed play–and he’s an average utility infielder at best. And utility infielders shouldn’t be getting 400 at-bats.

But you can’t blame the Cardinals, because the second Bad Second Baseman, Adam Kennedy, was supposed to keep Miles out of the lineup in the first place. An average bat and an above-average glove, he was going to approximate David Eckstein’s value, and do it, approximately, on David Eckstein’s old contract. Instead he had an OPS of .572 and eventually got hurt.

Altogether the Cardinals’ second basemen–in addition to Miles and Kennedy there was some Brendan Ryan and cameos of awful courtesy Miguel Cairo and Brian Barden–hit .265/.325/.340, barely managing 30 extra-base hits in 597 at-bats. The average NL second baseman–starters and backups–hit .272/.339/.419. As best I can figure it, the Cardinals’ second basemen cost them 22 runs, and that’s just on offense, and just compared to an average performer.

As for next year, the Cardinals have the pleasure of paying for two more years of Adam Kennedy, whether they use them or not, and while average thirtysomething second basemen are just about the worst bets imaginable for a bounceback he was a solidly average second baseman as recently as 2006. David Eckstein’s free agent status hangs over this part of the middle infield, too–it’s a guarantee that Brendan Ryan is going to see some significant playing time somewhere, and if Eck is resigned he’ll probably play a lot of second. (Which doesn’t make much sense, seeing as Ryan’s probably a better shortstop than Eck.) Jarrett Hoffpauir, the last man standing from the 2004 Draft-aster, came back from a mediocre season in 2006 to become a real prospect, hitting .323/.407/.473 between AA and AAA last year. Already 25, in baseball years, he won’t get much better than he already is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up being the Cardinals’ best second baseman by the end of the year. Faint praise, but praise nevertheless.

For completion’s sake, Junior Spivey hit his way onto the Pawtucket Red Sox and back into organized baseball with the Bridgeport Bluefish, hitting .333 and throwing up a .440 on-base percentage in the independent Atlantic League. If that’s not a signal that Adam Kennedy will hit .280 next year, I don’t know what is.

I didn’t actually watch it on TV, which probably explains my attitude toward the shenanigans, but this doesn’t seem to me to be any bigger a deal than any other blown save. Sure, it was against the Hated Cubs, and it was an eminently winnable game despite the Ace/Suppan matchup, but this is one of those scenarios where there’s no use murdering Tony La Russa over spilt milk.

That spilt milk, at least. Juan Mateo? That free arm the Cardinals almost grabbed? He showed good control and an ability to keep the ball in the park in his AA time this year, which is more than can be said for several members of the Cardinals rotation; with the emergence of Jaime Garcia (who, coincidentally, got whacked around in high-A yesterday) and the re-emergence of Blake Hawksworth and Chris Narveson it hurts a little less, but if the going rate for a solid pitching prospect is having a mop-up reliever a little worse than average the Cardinals should’ve given him more of a chance to stick. He’s shown little in the way of peripherals in his short major league tenure, but if the Cardinals had him throwing primarily low-leverage innings it wouldn’t much matter.

If you really want to feel bad, though, if you’re unable to control your desire to rage against the La Russa/Jocketty/Duncan machine, I’ve got the fuel; Take it away, Joe Strauss:

Manager Tony La Russa started Aaron Miles at the position but said that the club has discussed the availability of veteran switch-hitter Jose Vizcaino, who was designated for assignment by the San Francisco Giants on Monday.

I hope the discussion went like this:

JOCK: So, the Giants released Jose Vizcaino.
TLR: Really?
JOCK: Yeah.
TLR: Too bad he sucks.
JOCK: Yeah.

But I think it went like this:

TLR: So we’re agreed, no exciting prospects ever.
JOCK: Right. So, the Giants released Jose Vizcaino. Too bad he sucks.
TLR: Yeah. But wait– [consults filing cabinet, cross-references.] he once went 8-9 with two doubles and a triple against us on consecutive days.
JOCK: …
TLR: In April, 1996. Pretty good team that year, I just couldn’t get Mike Gallego enough at-bats when it counted. But about the “no exciting prospects” rule–
JOCK: Yeah?
TLR: Who’s going to break this to Dave?
JOCK: Marty Mason’s teaching Chris to throw a sinker. We’re calling it hit to contact.
TLR: Excellent.

Aaron Miles is not a good baseball player, but Jose Vizcaino makes him look positively Eckstein-esque. Not only is he hitting .210/.304/.261–he’s lost so much bat-speed he can’t even be hacktastic anymore–but he’s been useful two years out of the last ten. The Cardinals need infield depth, certainly, but Jose Vizcaino is not the answer; three-true-outcomes hero John Nelson (currently batting .219/.297/.409 with 19 home runs and 138 strikeouts) or Warm Fuzzy Bo Hart, both in Memphis, could do a better job and they’re in the organization. Picking up Vizcaino for the ten days between now and the rosters expanding only leaves more room to make a terrible mistake when choosing the playoff roster. I never thought I’d say this, but: let Aaron Miles play!

I’d say this is an exception, mainly because that was the most cathartic victory all season. (I’d link to my rev. redbird-mandated Optimistic Post from a while back, but the memories are just too painful.) It’s a talented team, as the mantra goes–but yesterday’s win even had the, ah, unskilled laborers playing the most important roles of all. Sometimes things just work out like that; here are some things that don’t happen when Team is mired in a losing streak:

• The Astros don’t slink off with just two runs in a three-XBH sixth inning. Remember the XBH binges during The Streak and The Royals Thing? How the Cardinals would walk batters and then let them score on doubles through the gap or long home runs? Did it look like anyone not wearing red would ever ground into a double play during the White Sox series?
• The Cardinals don’t blow a big, late-gained lead. Just kidding. They do that.
• Izzy doesn’t get out of the ninth. Here is a guy overmatched; Isringhausen’s thrown a ton of pitches over the last two days, and he comes in in the ninth with a runner on base. He allows the one run, blowing the save, but then gets out of the inning when… the completely insignificant runner on first base is picked off!? Molina’s always been heralded as a great defensive catcher, but I never heard of a scout rating his mind control tool an 80. What are the odds that the Astros trade out for their backup catcher? That they leave the notoriously flaky, slow-moving Munson on first? That he takes a vesitigial secondary lead? They’re slim, extremely slim–unless you’re Yadier Molina, in which case everybody has a dangerously long lead.
• Braden Looper doesn’t not suck. So it’s the bottom of the tenth; the Cardinals, already struck by a sacrifice fly to tie a game they had secured, have squandered a hustling one-out triple from Albert Pujols. The whole scene has seemed inevitable since Chris Carpenter’s last exasperated pitch. In comes Braden Looper, the most snakebitten ex-closer to take up residence in the Cardinals bullpen since Heathcliff Slocumb in 2000. He of the 95 mph fastball and the 95.00 WHIP charges out of the bullpen and gets a lineout. Then he proceeds to give up a double, hit a batter, and then walk another one. Still in the middle of the order.

  He ponders the situation. Strokes his chin.

  It’s a large chin, but he finishes the job and, after some careful consideration he continues on his gameplan–throw the ball really hard and sort of at them. Strikes out Preston Wilson and Jason Lane in order. End threat. The bullpen depleted, he walks back out the next inning and throws a fastball that Eric Bruntlett has to swing at to protect his eyes. Eric Munson proves an equally quick out, and up walks Roy Oswalt, pinch hitter by default.

• Roy Oswalt doesn’t not-double. And Looper, finally looking like the big, hulking closer the Cardinals signed to a multi-year contract, throws a meatball that Oswalt, yesterday’s goat, slashes into the left field corner. Poetic justice! The Cardinals felled, not only by their own poor personnel moves in the offseason, but also by the very pitcher that gave them a brief reprieve. Except he missed the bag. How rare is that? Rare enough that one doesn’t even have to think about subdividing it further, into “missed bag plays that actually get called by the umpires.” But the… demonstrative behavior of the Astros’ first base coach, Jose Cruz, appeared to tip off both first base ump Bob Davidson and tenth-inning goat Juan Encarnacion to Oswalt’s baserunning whiff, and the second most unlikely play of the entire game is complete.
• Aaron Miles, etc. Aaron Miles can’t hit a 97 mph fastball. He hit a 97 mph fastball. It’s safe to say that, two weeks ago, the Cardinals don’t recover from the unthinkable happening. And yet, after Brad Lidge managed to retire Albert Pujols, La Russa found an obscure rule in the book that allowed him to designate a surrogate daddy for “Lights Out”, and suddenly Aaron Miles was in business.

Sometimes these things happen, sometimes they don’t. When you’re a good team, rather than a great one, they become inordinately important. Here’s to more completely asinine developments in the Cardinals’ favor in the second half.

Well, this isn’t quite how I imagined things going; I thought there would be a trade, or an injury, or a guy who was obviously done, even. But not a guy who didn’t run in pre-game.

Not, honestly, that it bothers me all that much. He couldn’t go deep into ballgames, and his peripherals didn’t really make me want him to go that deep into ballgames. Nevertheless, Sid was–and is, though apparently he’s not long for the ballclub–a great story, and it seemed like he was ready to put in the work required to get back to the faux ace status he lucked into with the Orioles in 2003.

… Now that he’s the odd man out, of course, it comes to us from the omnipresent Bernie Miklasz that no such thing has happened, and he’s been getting wider and slower as the year stretches on. I don’t doubt that this is true, but it just goes to show that we only hear about this stuff when a player is doing badly or on his way out. Up until that point, it doesn’t matter that so-and-so doesn’t run windsprints before games, or sign autographs, or climb the facade of the Arch to rescue children who have second thoughts halfway up. If Heavy P–I’ll miss that nickname–were able to go a little deeper into games, we would have spent the entire year being none the wiser that he was gaining weight–unless we were his dry cleaner. But it still would’ve happened. Just something to think about.

But that wasn’t all that happened, of course. Nice game, aside from the weather; the Upbabys traveled to St. Louis for the occasion, even though dadup is the most baseball-averse member of the family. Chris Carpenter–well, he’s really good. Juan Encarnacion got a big round of applause whenever he did something; as the home crowd giveth, so do they taketh away, in this case the death threats. Did I think, in those naive March days, that I would eventually feel compelled to come to the defense of a player who, at his absolute peak, would hit .280/.307/.480? No–no I did not. Such a player is hard to underrate, but given that people wanted to see him sent down to AAA, or incarcerated, or killed, it was happening. Please don’t make me do that again, talk radio. It hurt. Meanwhile, Jason Isringhausen’s trip to the mound was met with complete and utter indifference, which is a massive improvement over where things were a week ago. He should be getting some golf claps by mid-July.

Aaron Miles… well, the triple was great to see, but nevertheless he’s shown signs of turning back into a pumpkin, or Bo Hart, or whatever it is middle infielders turn into; since April ended he’s hit .263/.316/.314. The bump in plate discipline is still there–thank goodness, that really does appear to be the result of a concentrated effort as opposed to a fluke–but, as I guessed a while back, after a while pitchers realize that they’re not going to be burned by throwing fastballs down the middle, over and over. I think the batting average is going to come back up a little, and with his platoon split he’s still a solid guy to have on the bench, but the days of high-OBP Miles appear to be over. It was a good month.

With Scrubs not jumping but certainly doing an end run around the shark in its season finale today, you’d think the least the Cardinals could do would be to put together a win, or at least lose interestingly. Classic Suppan mediocre-fest; the most interesting, fantastic news is that Juancar drew one more walk, bringing his isolated discipline to a remarkable .030, perfectly acceptable if you’re more Alfonso Soriano than Aaron Boone.

Hector Luna went 2-4; small sample size–well, small sample size is going to apply until the end of the year, pretty much–but that brings his batting average since 2005 began all the way up to .300. His numbers: .300/.355/.428, with 12 stolen bases, in a little over 200 at-bats. That’s… well, a lot more than I expected out of the Agegate-stricken, empty batting average nobody the Cardinals scooped up in the Rule 5 draft and carried on a pennant-winning team, despite my protestations. (I ask you: who were they, to defy me?) Certainly a starting second baseman, should Aaron Miles ever decide to give “Camera Eye” Bishop his bat back.

And, really, we are heading into that Max Bishop/Brett Butler “why don’t they just throw it down central every time?” territory with Miles hitting like this. At this point he has five extra base hits and fifteen walks. Bishop, a second baseman who in 1929 hit a stunning .232/.398/.316, has New Miles beat; he walked 3.7 times for every long hit in his career. Heck–his walk to hit ratio, .948, is just as ridiculous. If you compare him to the master, Miles is still just camera-phone-eye, but there’s still Butler, a more modern point of comparison. Largely on quickness alone, Butler managed 462 extra-base hits in his long career. His walk/xbh ratio? A pedestrian 2.44.

But let’s cast our eyes specifically to the modern day. Since 1960, the lowest BB/XBH ratio of anybody with 400 at-bats belongs to Carlos Baerga–this is the rising star, pre-eating-Roberto-Alomar stage Baerga–with a .189 mark in 1994. He hit 32 doubles, 2 triples, and 19 home runs… and walked 10 times. He just barely edged out Shawon Dunston ‘95 and Mariano Duncan ‘96, who had five extra-base hits for every walk. The highest Cardinal on the list? That would be Garry Templeton ‘79, with a ratio of .333–60 XBH, 18 BB. That’s only enough to rank him 23rd. The bottom five:

1. .333–Garry Templeton ‘79
2. .352–Ken Reitz ‘77
3. .369–Lou Brock ‘67
4. .407–Willie McGee ‘87
5. .478–Garry Templeton ‘78

And since I know you’re asking yourself this very question: yes, Juan Encarnacion is on pace to break Templeton’s stranglehold on the record. Hey… maybe we can trade him for Joey Gathright, who will proceed to hike his walk rate, take some tumbling lessons, and become a God in St. Louis?

As for the marks to which Aaron Miles is aspiring… well, he’s got some hard work to do, thanks to the numerous Slappy McEighties types on the list. Billy North, in 1980, has the high mark: he went .251/.373/.292, with 14 extra-base hits and 81 walks. Miles has some not-hitting to do to match his 5.79 mark, which just eclipses seasons from Gary Pettis (1989, 5.6) and Richie Ashburn(!) (1960, 5.52.) The top Cardinal, sadly, is a ways further down this list; it’s Dal Maxvill’s 1968 season. The list:

1. 3.71–Dal Maxvill ‘68
2. 3.68–Ted Sizemore ‘74
3. 3.44–Ozzie Smith ‘86
4. 3.22–Jose Oquendo ‘90
5. 3.00–Ray Lankford ‘93

Odd, isn’t it, how by and large the players on the first list are better hitters than the players on the second list? (Lankford’s power outage that year was inconsistent with the rest of his career, before and after.) Maxvill and Sizemore were scrubs, though well-regarded ones, while Smith and Oquendo were middle infielders who followed the Whiteyball work-the-count philosophy to a T. Brock and Templeton, on the other hand, were overexposed young prospects. One adjusted and one didn’t, but the simple fact that they had the chance to illustrates one thing: you can adjust to walk more, but you can’t adjust to be more talented.

Miles is much better than Dal Maxvill, so there’s hope for Point-and-Shoot yet, but there’s a reason we all groaned when the diminuitive infielder joined the club: someone was suddenly given license to make a low upside pun. You know, that and the actual low upside.

So. What have we going on today? Well, there’s the Anthony Reyes is-he-or-isn’t-he-hurt controversy, but lboros has the inside track on that.

• But I, apparently, have the inside track on Brady Toops; nine Googlers today have come out of the woodwork looking for information on the guy, but I must admit–I only know him from the stats. Thankfully, the Brady Toops expert has contacted me through the comments, and as it turns out her site still exists. From Miranda Hudson, the site’s erstwhile webmaster:

  What the heck!?!?!? That’s my site!!!! So awesome that someone found it!! Anyway, it hasn’t been taken off, I just changed the url…so the way to get it un-cached go [here.] Yeah, I named my dog after him!

  So, if you’re after Brady Toops info–sadly, no such site exists for Matt Pagnozzi–check it out.

• Get Up, Baby! is now the proud sponsor of Ross Barnes’s Baseball-Reference page. I mentioned him a few days ago; he’s always been one of my favorite historical players. And yes, if Miles continues to walk I’ll change the sponsorship thing to, say, Tony Womack.
• It’s no consolation for Reyes’s issues, but former top prospect/cool name Hall of Famer Blake Hawksworth continues to make progress down in Palm Beach. On the 29th he struck out six batters and walked two in six shutout innings of work. He’s still got a ways to go, but for a guy who threw 25 1/3 awful innings combined in 2004 and 2005 his 25 2006 innings with a 2.16 ERA are great news.
• How about Juancar? A 425 foot homer as I sit down to finish this skimpy post off. He may only end up an average player, but with his tools it’ll be an exciting average.

After all of the nervousness over the hometown fans’ new propensity towards booing and Juancar’s old propensity to being mediocre, the Cardinals pulled out the ultimate comfort food game. Worried about Albert being the only bat in the lineup? Jim “I don’t want to go on the cart!” Edmonds jumps all over two balls in his first game back in the lineup, including a long double after Phat Albert got intentionally walked. Worried about the bullpen sucking it up? Carpenter goes eight scoreless and Isringhausen carves up the middle of the Pirates’ order. Voila, no Rincon necessary! As though that wasn’t enough, our favorite all-lilliput middle infield combined to go 3-7 with a double and a home run. (Because I care, a motivational fact for Eckstiles: the National League’s first batting champ and all-around superstar of the 1870s, Ross Barnes, was 5′8″ 140 and looked even less like a ballplayer than Milestein. If either one of them hits .429/.462/.590, to complete the comparison, things will look much rosier this year.)

Meanwhile, on the OH NO STEROIDS ARE RUINING THE GAME!!! front, the Cardinals have their first casualty to the new, tougher program: low-A Quad Cities reserve outfielder Yonathan Sivira. His name will be dearly missed. In slightly more important minor league news, hi-A farmhand/high profile almost-bust Mike Ferris’s base-reaching streak came to an end, thanks to a pinch-hit strikeout on the 17th, but he’s still reached base in every other game his team’s played; after two doubles today he’s up to .354/.426/.729 on the season. Also in Palm Beach, Blake Hawksworth, the top prospect du jour between the Dan Haren and Daric Barton eras who’s only now returning to form after some nasty arm injuries, continued to pitch well; he threw six scoreless, striking out two and walking only one. Like Ferris, who provided some of the offense in his win, if he pushes himself back up to AA he’ll become an interesting prospect once more.

In more substantial bloggery, CardNilly was pseudo-liveblogging this one; today’s assignment was fact-checking Al Hrabosky, so I’d imagine he’s more tuckered out than the rest of us right about now. At VEB lboros wonders about whether or not Hancock bought himself another few weeks in the bullpen with his nice mop-up work after Suppan’s spill.

No baseball on TV the day after (the day after) Opening Day? Don’t give me my fix and then hold out on me like that, man, it’s–it’s not cool.

In any case, baseball season’s a go, and considering how on edge I was even as the Cardinals’ 13-5 eviscerating of the Phillies came to a close, I’m going to need to invest in some high-class tranquilizer before the season’s over. Or the month. Or–but that can wait.

So. Aaron Miles. How many IMs, e-mails, and passing-in-the-hallway-conversations do you think I got about his opening day performance? If you said “Not many!” you’d be right, but it’s only because you know I am not very popular; they make up for what they lack in quantity by their consistent “I told you so!” quality. I intend to pay it back in full when he is sucking it up a month from now, although I don’t think most of the hallway folk will care because he Hustles and Plays the Game the Right Way and is Not Very Tall.

Some people are taking a degree of solace in his minor league numbers, which show competance at the very least, but I’m worried that hitters of his type just don’t turn out as well in the big leagues as their numbers would forecast. One thing is certainly true, just like it was for keystone partner Deckstein–his walk rate isn’t going to look like those minor league totals, because pitchers in the major leagues have no reason at all to pitch him out of the strike zone. As a Boston farmhand, Eckstein’s BB/AB was 17.3%, 18.4%, and 14.2% over his last three years, generally walking less as he moved up in the system. In the majors, he’s walked in 7.8% of his at-bats, rising all the way up to 9.2%–a very good number for a guy with so little power–in his debut with the Cardinals.

Miles, in his third year in the low-A Midwest League, had a walk/at-bat percentage of 5.9%. Moving up to hi-A the next year it was 9.4%; I don’t have numbers for the next year, thanks presumably to the whims of Baseball Cube, but in AA and AAA the two years after it was 7.5% and 7.3%. In the majors, over his career, it is 4.3%; I don’t expect a lot more than that, but I will say this: if he either walks in more than 9% of his at-bats, a la Eckstein, or puts up an OBP of .340, a la 14 points lower than Spivey’s fluke-aided career average, I will sponsor his pages on Baseball-Reference and the Baseball Cube for so long as he remains a Cardinal. If his OBP is over .380, this page will be known as the Aaron Miles Appreciation Club for the calendar year 2007 and I will stop making Woody Allen references.

But for the moment, the one thing that has me scared, the nightmare scenario that would keep me up at night, if I wasn’t already, is the vaguely off-the-wall idea that Skip Schumaker and So So Def might form a platoon at left field. Either makes a fine backup outfielder–good contact hitter, speedy pinch runner, and a bat nearly-average enough to stick for a few weeks at a stretch. But having both of them on the roster not only seems a little redundant, but also, so long as La Russa is the manager, dangerous–a little like leaving a Dave Matthews Band tour bus parked outside of Nate Newton’s house. One’s left-handed, one’s right-handed–one day, Tony might get a little bit mad at the sitting, hitting left fielder, Larry Bigbie or somebody, and Skippo Tagumaker might emerge as the Anointed One. Their career highs in home runs? So popped 10 of them in Japan in 1997, while Skip hit 7 in 450 at-bats between AAA and the bigs last year. If I had to guess what such a platoon would hit, it would come out looking something like .280/.325/.400, which would be awesome if they could just play second base.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Cody Haerther? Please come soon. And maybe bring Junior with you.

Having had a mediocre day yesterday, I admit, that last post might have been harsh. Not in terms of content–Aaron Miles just isn’t an adequate major league ballplayer–but in terms of execution. So here, cold numbers-wise, is why I would rather Spivey be the starting second baseman. By EQA (.260 is pretty much average; it takes most offensive contributions, including stolen bases into account; and obviously average is lower for 2B), and not counting the fluke season, here are the seasons of their careers:

Luna, 2005: .270
Spivey, 2004: .269
Spivey, 2003: .253
Spivey, 2005: (.241 with Brewers, .265 with Nats)
Luna, 2004: .236
Miles, 2004: .233
Miles, 2005: .224

Unless you seriously think that 100 at-bats–total, between the two of them–during spring training have shown a new talent level, there is no defensible way to look at this move, because over their careers Miles is an awful hitter, Spivey is–at worst–an adequate one. Since I think Spring Training stats are about as predictive as those quarter-a-pop fortune telling machines, I’m just stunned that people are ready to waive Spivey based on a bad spring training.

I don’t normally post on the weekends, but–ugh.

“Miles started today. And I’m going to play him tomorrow,” La Russa said. “Is he going to start opening day? If opening day was tomorrow, he would be the starter… He’s been a good player. He takes good at-bats. He’s caught the ball well to his left and right. He starts double plays,” La Russa said.

Look, Tony. I like you. You’re a great manager, an underrated one, even, ever since people took to pulling, at every opportunity, the Billy-Beane-wrote-Moneyball-esque fallacy that you, rather than George F. Will, fancy yourself a genius. But would you like to know how many major league second basemen catch the ball well and start double plays?

All of them. That’s what they do! Carlos Baerga, even after having eaten Mo Vaughn, can catch the ball well. My younger brother is currently the starting second baseman for his varsity team, and let me tell you–kid knows how to catch the ball. Takes good at-bats, too; works the count like he’s Ted Williams out there. Want to sign him? Tell you what, I’ll draw up the papers today and I’ll practice going to my left and to my right with him later tonight, in case you need a backup. What you have to worry about, Tony, is that Aaron Miles–unlike my younger brother–couldn’t hit my wiffle curveball out of the backyard. Good at-bats are the ones that end in a runner on base, not a scrappy mchustler walking back to the dugout having fouled three pitches off and grounded a ball to–surprise!–a second baseman who catches the ball well. Maybe he’ll even start a double play!

Now, sitting on the bench opening day will be–at the very least–two second basemen who are better hitters than Aaron Miles. When Jose Oquendo isn’t coaching third base, there will be three, and over in Memphis Travis Hanson will be taking ground balls so he can be number four. Miles’s career numbers–having spent the whole, gloriously mediocre shebang in Coors Field–are .289/.320/.366. If he puts those numbers up, it will be a successful season for him… and he still won’t be very good. Junior Spivey–injured most of 2005–put up career lows of .232/.315/.378 last year. Now, I realize he’s had a bad spring training, but let’s not be really dumb here.

Remember Gabe Gross, Tony? Just last year–he hit .385/.468/.904 in spring training for the Blue Jays. 8 home runs in 52 at-bats. The Blue Jays, not being really dumb about the whole thing, sent him to AAA anyway, where he hit… 6 homers the whole year. Or there was this pitcher. He was coming off of an injury, really detrimental one, but he had a sort of semi-hold on a rotation spot. So he went to Spring Training, and he sucked. 8.00 ERA, 7 strikeouts and 5 walks in 18 innings. But the team gave him a spot anyway, and he went 15-5. Then, in 2005, he turned it all the way up and won a Cy Young. I’m not saying Junior Spivey is going to win any silver sluggers, but even last year, he’s Top-of-Potential Miles’s equal as a hitter. Not only that, but by most measures he’s a better fielder.

I’m not worried about this too much, Tony, because aside from a few Mike Gallego-sized blind spots you’re a solid evaluator of talent. Once you see that Junior Spivey isn’t going to hit .150 in the regular season, and that Aaron Miles isn’t as good as David Eckstein just because they resemble one-another with their caps pulled down low enough, I’m hoping you’ll make the switch.

Your Pal,
Daniel.
P.S.: You screwed Ray Lankford over twice, too, don’t think I’m not still mad about that.
P.P.S.: I loved your baseball game on the Genesis.