AJC > Sports > Braves > Blog > Archives > 2008 > December > 02
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Hampton is gone, while Peavy is …
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Come back … no, good riddance … Please stay, we need you … no, please just go.
Does that pretty much summarize the polarizing presence that was Mike Hampton?
While most of his Braves teammates, and apparently a third of our readers, wanted Mike Hampton back, the poll on our AJC.com Braves page indicates that fully two-thirds of voting fans were pleased to see the injury-plagued lefty hit the road.
More than anything else, I think that says something about Hampton’s personality - teammates knew him well, and all of them I talked to really liked having him around, despite the fact he was hurt and/or recovering from surgeries for most of the time for the past three seasons.
Most fans only know what they’ve read or heard about him, that he was a nice guy with a great sense of humor and a body that repeatedly broke down.
I think fans have good reason for being glad Hampton is gone.
Hear me out. In the past I’ve said I hoped he’d be back, but admittedly that was largely for selfish reasons: Folks, Mike Hampton is a great quote and was good for at least one laugh a day — and usually several — with a putdown directed at a teammate or one of the broadcasters or beat writers.
But let’s be honest: What were the chances that Hampton was going to remain as fit and effective in 2009 as he was in the second half of the 2008 season, after it took him nearly three full years between major league starts to get healthy.
To refresh memories: Hampton did not make a start, not a single major league start, between Aug. 19, 2005 and July 26, 2008. Two elbow surgeries and various back, leg and side injuries sidelined him for 35 months.
He was with the Braves for six seasons, and was DL’d for about half of that period.
The Braves wanted him back, but not to fill one of their top-of-the-rotation spots. GM Frank Wren made that clear the day after the regular season ended, when I asked him if Hampton, John Smoltz or Tom Glavine would possibly be one of the two proven, veteran pitcher he sought to add this winter.
No, Wren said. If any or all of those three veterans returned in 2009, they would be in addition to the two frontline pitchers the Braves hoped to land. The Braves weren’t counting on any of the trio to fill a frontline rotation spot, one of the two spots they’d still like to fill in order to slot Jair Jurrjens in the No. 3 position where such a talented-but-young pitcher would ideally fit in a strong starting rotation.
Have things changed since then? Perhaps. The market clearly isn’t what the Braves hoped it might be vis-à-vis the pursuit of two frontline starters. There were only a handful of free agents available who fit the bill or even came close, and there were more than a few teams in pursuit of those limited arms.
One of them is already gone, Ryan Dempster having re-upped with the Cubs.
And he was one of those who “came close” to fitting the bill more than actually fitting it fully, given that, before going 17-6 with a 2.96 ERA in 206-2/3 innings in 2008, five seasons had passed since Dempster started more than 20 games, won more than five or pitched as many as 116 innings (he was hurt or relieving in the interim).
The remaining field includes CC Sabathia, whose price tag puts him out of the Braves’ range (they’re not going to commit approximately one-quarter of their annual payroll to a starting pitcher, even if Sabathia’s the best one available and arguably one of the best three or four starters in the game.)
That leaves some guy named Jake Peavy (you didn’t think we could go another whole blog without talking about him, did you?) and free agents A.J. Burnett and Derek Lowe as reliable front-line starters who are clearly available.
The Braves have inquired about a few other aces - most notably Houston’s Roy Oswalt and San Francisco’s Matt Cain - to see if they might be available, and so far haven’t received favorable replies in those pursuits.
As for Lowe, the market for the 35-year-old innings-eater is lined with deep-pocketed pursuers including the Red Sox, his old team. The Scott Boras client could end up getting a four- or five-year contract worth perhaps than $15 million annually.
Lowe, a Type A free agent who was offered arbitration by the Dodgers, has indicated that going to a winning team is his main priority, a team with a chance to be in the playoffs every year for the length of his contract. If the Red Sox really want him, it’s hard for me to envision another team except possibly the Yankees getting between Lowe and a reunion with Boston.
Those two might be the only ones comfortable spending the kind of dollars it’ll take to sign Lowe, who, let’s face it folks, has a 126-107 career record (and 85 saves) with a 3.75 ERA, very good numbers but hardly world-beater stuff.
We’re talking about a guy who has been more than three games above .500 just once in the past five seasons, when he was 16-8 with a 3.63 ERA for the Dodgers in 2006. He’s 26-25 over the past two seasons, albeit with a strong 3.24 ERA in 2008.
In Lowe’s last season with the Red Sox in 2004, he was 14-12 with a 5.42 ERA. And in his first with the Dodgers in 2005, he was 12-15 with a 3.61 ERA and allowed 28 homers.
Reliable, undoubtedly (after Tom Glavine got hurt last year, it left Lowe as the only active major league pitcher with 10-plus seasons and no DL stints). But if you’re the Braves, is this the the guy you want to give the largest contract you ever gave a pitcher?
Probably not, which is probably why we’ve heard no indications they’re actively pursuing him, despite the near-unanimous view expressed by Braves players at the end of last season that Lowe was the guy, or one of the two or three, the Braves should go after hardest.
That was probably a reflection both of the players’ frustrations over the litany of injuries that have left the Braves’ rotation a patchwork unit for the past few seasons, and of the fondness that most players have for Lowe. They wanted a guy they could count on for 200 innings, and hey, he’s a good dude, too.
But do you throw that kind of money at Lowe, who’ll be 36 in June, has never struck out 150 batters, and hasn’t won more than 16 games since his back-to-back seasons of 21-8 and 17-7 in 2002-03. Or do you cross your fingers and throw similar money at Burnett, who’ll be 32 in January and went 18-10 with an AL-leading 231 strikeouts in 221-1/3 innings last season after missing starts for shoulder and elbow issues the previous two seasons?
I’m hearing the Braves are choosing the latter, in part because they have a much better shot at landing Burnett than Lowe, and partly because they want a power arm who can dominate opponents to be the guy at the top of a rotation that includes budding stalwart Jair Jurrjens and, well, fill in the blanks.
The Braves made a strong push for Jake Peavy that lasted about six weeks, many hours spent talking to Padres GM Kevin Towers about what it would take to get the 2007 Cy Young Award winner and Alabama native. But those talks stalled and the Braves announced they were pulling out three weeks ago.
There have been no discussions between the parties since, though Towers continues to discuss openly why he thinks Peavy might not go to the Braves — their old policy against no-trade-clauses, for one thing — and about how close the Braves and Padres seemed to be in a deal, etc.
To many this is a sign that Towers sees what others do, that the Braves’ four-player offer, including Yunel Escobar and center-field prospect Gorkys Hernandez, is a far better deal than he’s been offered by any other team for Peavy, who is signed to a reasonable contract over the next four or five years, but who comes with some concerns about his elbow and violent delivery, not to mention the questions starting to arise about his silence and inaccessibility to reporters and others all winter while his future has been discussed at length and while rumors fly that he likes this team, doesn’t like that one, might not like the Braves anymore, etc.
Do I think the Peavy-Braves thing is dead? No, but I’m not as confident as I was a few weeks ago that the Braves and Padres would get the deal done. The ham-fisted way that this thing has been handled has undoubtedly added obstacles to what should have been a relatively easy deal to get done.
From what I hear, Towers kept coming back to the table asking for more, and the Braves got tired of waiting and trying to satisfy his demands, when it didn’t seem that any other team was offering a package that would justify the Braves having to sweeten their own offer.
The Braves have serious need for pitching, and knew that if they waited and waited for Towers and Peavy as the Winter Meeting approached, they might miss out on one or more of the few other pitchers available, particularly after Dempster re-upped with the Cubs, taking that option off the board.
They’re in heavily in the Burnett sweepstakes, and the Braves have kicked the tires on other, lesser pitchers (remember, they still want to add two starters to add to the top half of the rotation if at all possible, and that never included Hampton, Smoltz or Glavine).
Oh, and that brings us back around to Hampton, and the personality thing that I was getting at when I begin this rambling monologue.
Just as personality is a reason that so many Braves want Lowe - they talk to him, they talk to others who know him, and they all get the impression he’s a great dude - it also colored their desire to bring back Hampton, just as it made many of us in the media hope the Braves would have a spot for him.
But facts are facts, and the prospect of going through another injury-plagued season with Hampton — the whole he’s hurt, he’s rehabbing, he’s got one more rehab start possibly, blah blah blah — was arguably not worth the potential of getting a solid six or seven innings out of him most starts if he was healthy.
Just consider this: The Braves paid him $48.5 million over six seasons, during which he made 85 starts and went 35-24 with a 4.10 ERA in 509-2/3 innings.
That works out to about $570,000 per start, $1.39 million per win, $95,160 per inning, although insurance paid portions of his salary while he was on the DL.
Hampton made $84.5 million during that six-year stretch, the rest paid by the Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins as part of the three-team trade that brought him to Atlanta in November 2002, including a $6 million buyout of a 2009 option. That’s $84.5 million for 85 starts and a whole lot of rehab.
He signed a then-record eight-year, $121 million contract with Colorado before the 2001 season, and was traded after two disappointing seasons.
After going 63-31 with a 3.30 ERA in 133 starts over the four seasons before he signed the huge contract, Hampton went 56-52 with a 4.81 ERA in 147 starts during the eight-year deal. Or, about $910,000 per start for the past eight years.
While I know plenty of folks out there are skeptical — hey, my e-mail makes that clear — of his supposed desire to be closer to his kids as a reason he took the Houston offer, keep in mind he’s going through a divorce and the kids are going to be with their mother in Arizona. Moving them to Atlanta: Not an option.
The Diamonbacks didn’t want him, or he’d have gone there. And, let’s face it, Hampton, at 36 and still a North Florida country boy at heart, might also just have felt more comfortable in Houston, around his old buddies including Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell, who still live out there.
Besides, when you’ve made $121 million, even if you’re going to lose a lot of that in a divorce, you’ve probably still got plenty in the bank to make it easy to take a little less to pitch for one team (Astros) than was offered by another (Braves).
I was assured by two people close to the situation that the Braves actually offered more in a one-year proposal than the Astros, who are giving him a $2 mill contract with incentives that could add another $2 mill to the total if he makes enough starts.
But in the end, it didn’t matter. Hampton was more comfortable with Houston.
C’est la vie. Let’s just not make it out as though that puts a huge blow in the Braves’ offseason plans. They made it clear from the start that, whether or not he returned, he was not going to be one of the two pitchers they hoped to land this winter. He was going to be a back-of-the-rotation guy.
Those guys are important, particularly for a team that’s been undercut by its injury-plagued rotations for the past couple of seasons.
But Hampton was not going to make or break the season.
And as for any quaint notion of “loyalty,” on the part of a player and/or team, people, you should all know by now you’re just setting yourself up for repeated disappointment if you even remotely expect it in this day and age. Some might talk about it, but when it comes down to making a decision … well, we’ll leave it at that.
It’s a two-way street, and these days neither lane is traveled very often at all.
Not getting Hampton wasn’t a season-maker, not at all. But not getting a Peavy, Burnett or Lowe, someone of that ilk … now that’s the kind of thing that can definitely make or break a season.
Those who keep asking about the likes of Ben Sheets and Randy Johnson, keep in mind that Sheets is a gifted pitcher whose injury history makes him too unreliable to give a big contract as a No. 1 starter (he never won more than 12 games before this season), and Big Unit has serious back issues that would seem to make him a bad fit for Frank Wren’s plan to move forward with a reliable ace for the next several years or more.
Also, and we can discuss this more in the comments below, not adding any power to the outfield, is something elose that could seriously undermine the Braves’ chances in 2009. Which is why they continue quietly pushing to add a power bat, including some trade discussions we’ve heard about (Ryan Ludwick, possibly Jermaine Dye) and plenty we have not.
At next week’s Winter Meetings in Las Vegas, I would anticipate things starting to become clearer, dominoes beginning to fall, for the Braves and around baseball in general.
Now, just a few other things:
Rickey likes Rickey in HOF: Got my Hall of Fame ballot sitting here (I became eligible to vote four years ago after my 10th year in the BBWAA, but the AJC doesn’t permit us to vote), and Rickey Henderson jumps off the page. His first year on ballot, and he’s sure to get in right away.
Among the holdovers from last year’s ballot, I’m sure Jim Rice will finally make it in this year. He was named on 392 ballots (72.2 percent) last year, just 16 votes shy of the 75 percent required for election.
It’s Rice’s 15th and final time on the ballot this year.
Folks, while we all have a sentimental spot for Dale Murphy and can make a decent case for his selection to the Hall (he’s a long way from getting there), the case for Rice is far, far stronger.
The longtime Boston Red Sox publicist Dick Bresciani has made the case for Rice for years. Among the high points: Rice ranked among the top five in American League MVP voting in 1975, ‘77, ‘78, ‘79, ‘83, and ’86, the only player to among the top five in AL voting at least five times between 1963-2005.
He is one of only 16 ever to place among the top five in MVP voting at least six times. Of the 12 Hall-eligible players on that list, 11 are in Cooperstown, including eight elected on the first ballot. Rice is the lone exception.
Diversions: The Pogues, with their brilliant original lineup including Shane MacGowan (like Keith Richards, he’s apparently impervious) is set to play the Tabernacle in Atlanta on March 9. One of the few bands among my favorites that I’ve never seen, since they so rarely toured the United States…. By the way, Ray Davies is playing a solo show tonight at Variety Playhouse, but I’d like to get over to The EARL tonight to see this intriguing new band O’Death (I know, sensational name).
I meant to ask before, was anyone who reads this blog at the Finest Worksongs REM tribute by Athens bands in September 2006, at the 40-Watt Club in Athens? I’ve been playing the CD from that show, and particularly dig Patterson Hood’s cover of “Second Guessing” and the intro story about first seeing R.E.M. in Oxford, Miss. Modern Skirts’ cover of “Perfect Circle” is also outstanding.
My early Oscar pick for Best Actor: Sean Penn in Milk. Remarkable. But I hear that a surprising nominee could be Mickey Rourke as a washed-up wrestler in the soon-to-be-released The Wrestler. Seriously.
R.E.M. list, Pt. 2: By popular demand, we follow up our Top 10 list of top IRS-label R.E.M. songs from their 1982-1987 era, with a top dozen from the 20-year Warner Bros. era (1988 to present).
Much as it was next to impossible to pick 10 from the incredibly rich IRS years it was also difficult to limit it to a dozen from the Warner Brothers era. So we went with a baker’s dozen. Once you start going through the albums, you realize there were more great songs there than you might recall.
Feel free to give us your own 13. Here’s mine, in no particular order:
Man on the Moon; What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?; Country Feedback; How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us; Turn You Inside-Out; E-Bow the Letter; Walk Unafraid; Electrolite; All the Way to Reno; Bad Day; Mansized Wreath; Hollow Man; Losing My Religion.
OK, a tune to close: To finish this rambling essay, let’s go to the well that is Waits:
“BLACK WINGS” by Tom Waits
Take an eye for an eye
Take a tooth for a tooth
Just like they say in the Bible
Never leave a trace or forget a face
Of any man at the table
When the moon is a cold chiseled dagger
Sharp enough to draw blood from a stone
He rides through your dreams on a coach
And horses and the fence posts
In the midnight look like bones
Well they’ve stopped trying to hold him
With mortar, stone and chain
He broke out of every prison
Boots mount the staircase
The door is flung back open
He’s not there for he has risen
He’s not there for he has risen
Well he once killed a man with a guitar string
He’s been seen at the table with kings
Well he once saved a baby from drowning
There are those who say beneath his coat there are wings
Some say they fear him
Others admire him
Because he steals his promise
One look in his eye
Everyone denies
Ever having met him
Ever having met him
He can turn himself into a stranger
Well they broke a lot of canes on his hide
He was born away in a cornfield
A fever beats in his head like a drum inside
Some say they fear him
Others admire him
Because he steals his promise
One look in his eye
Everyone denies
Ever having met him
Ever having met him
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