Buhner Dot Com Est. 2000, which is like 1947 in Internet years.

The birth of a new blog

And while I'm still putting off redoing the site (mainly because I don't redo the site, Tara does, and she's uber busy), I'm managing to launch ANOTHER blog. This one is a baseball related one, and I'm going to try to update that one every day during the baseball season - at least during weekdays.

The link to it is baseball.buhner.com

This is a pathetic attempt to keep writing something every day. I seriously need to get into the habit of writing. And, the belief is that if I manage to write in the baseball blog every day, I'll write here every day.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll have something worthwile to say.

Danny Bautista… Danny Bautista?

Let's start this off with a very telling quote:

"Everyone's kind of dumbfounded today. We just lost our cleanup hitter and we don't know what happened. It's kind of a weird situation. It's a zoo around here today."
--Devil Rays DH Aubrey Huff, on right fielder and cleanup hitter Danny Bautista announcing his retirement just a day after Roberto Alomar did (St. Petersburg Times)

Now, seeing this quote brings up two immedate questions. First, what's wrong with Danny Bautista? Bautista had just come off a season where he started 137 games, the most in his career. He was 32 years old at the time of his announcement, not necessarily the time that a player steps down in his career, especially coming off his first full season as a starter and signing a free agent contract to be the starting right fielder in Tampa. Bautista suffered a serious shoulder injury in 2002, but outside of that, had no real history of injuries breaking down his body any quicker than normal.

Bautista didn't give any reasoning as to why he was retiring, and he shouldn't necessarily have to. When you make a decision to leave your job (and this might sound hypocritical for how I've lashed out at Ricky Williams and his retirement) you shouldn't have to explain yourself if you don't want to. Bautista has made a few dollars over his career - enough that he should be able to live the rest of his career without having to work again. If that's how he feels, so be it.

The more alarming thing (and the thing I wanted to get to) was the fact that Tampa was seriously considering (at least in Aubrey Huff's eyes) Bautista as their cleanup hitter. While Bautista wasn't necessarily a bad player (a decent defensive outfielder, VORP of 14.4 last season with Arizona), he's more of an ideal 6-8 spot batter on regular teams. While he hits for a decent average (a batting average no lower than .275 over the last few seasons), he's not a player who takes a lot of walks, and is better suited near the lower part of the order.

So was Huff confused, or was the concern legitimate? Let's look at the projected starters for the 2005 Tampa Bay Devil Rays (with Bautista in the mix)

C Toby Hall (.255/.300/.666)
1B Travis Lee (.275/.348/.807)*
2B Jorge Cantu (.301/.341/.803)**
3B Alex Gonzalez (.225/.263/.632)
SS Julio Lugo (.275/.338/.734)
LF Aubrey Huff (.297/.360/.853)
CF Carl Crawford (.296/.331/.781)
RF Danny Bautista (.286/.332/.733)
DH Josh Phelps (.251/.304/.754)
* 2003 season
** over 50 games

Two things that jump out at you looking at this lineup. The first is that Alex Gonzalez as a starting third base option should never ever be considered, and the other is that Danny Bautista isn't the best hitter in this lineup, justifying a #3 or #4 spot in the order. Hell, he'd have a tough argument for 5th best.

While Cantu is untested over a full season and Lee is coming off an injury that robbed him of most of his 2004 season, Bautista never showed much to justify him being a go-to bat. While Gonzalez's inability to hit and Toby Hall struggling to live up to his supposed potential anchoring them to the bottom of the order, a more reasonable order might look like this:

SS Julio Lugo
CF Carl Crawford
1B Travis Lee
LF Aubrey Huff
DH Josh Phelps
RF Danny Bautista
2B Jorge Cantu
C Toby Hall
3B Alex Gonzalez

There's several areas of flexability here - Lee seems more of a fit in the #2 slot, but I put Crawford in the #2 due to his speed - he's far from a leadoff guy, though. If Phelps turns the corner and learns to hit righthanded pitchers as well as he hits lefties, he could push Huff into the 3 and settle into the 4, pushing Lee to the #5.

However, looking at this, one can actually see where a Lou Pinella would be batting Bautista in the #4 slot. Keeping with the Lugo-Crawford top of the order, if one decides to take their best hitter and put him in the #3 spot (which many managers employ), that leaves three options for the cleanup spot - Lee, Phelps, and Bautista. Against righthanded pitching, Phelps has batted horrible, so it comes down to Lee and Bautista, and both are reasonably even options.

But how did Tampa get here? Granted, an injury to Rocco Baldelli put a major wrench into the works, but it's not like Baldelli was a cleanup hitter, or even a player that would put Bautista out of the lineup - when Baldelli returned, Huff would switch from left to third base and get Alex Gonzalez's horrid bat out of the lineup.

The Devil Rays used four players for the majority of the season in the cleanup position in 2004 - Huff, Baldelli, Tino Martinez, and Jose Cruz Jr. Martinez and Cruz have since departed - Martinez because he was too expensive (he had an $8 million option for 2005 that was bought out for $1 million) and Cruz was traded - also possibly because he was too expensive. Cruz signed a two year deal with Tampa in 2004 that was scheduled to pay him $2.5 million in 2004 and $3.5 million in 2005, both years getting a 500k bonus if Cruz reached 600 plate appearences in 2004 (which he did). With Cruz's numbers steadily declining (and his defense apparently eroding - the former gold glover made 10 errors in Tampa last season), the Rays dumped his salary off to Arizona.

Would the Rays have dumped off Cruz had they known Bautista would be gone? Perhaps. But as it stands right now, the Devil Rays have two healthy outfielders on their 25 man roster - Crawford and Huff. If the Devil Rays don't turn face and reconsider Jonny Gomes and Joey Gathright (both of whom were recently reassigned to their minor league clubs, the Rays have to pick two, possibly three outfield options out of Dee Brown, Tom Goodwin, and Chris Singleton. Goodwin lost most of his value many years ago - outside of a "veteran influence", he brings minimum value as a hitter, and doesn't have the range he once had as an outfielder. Singleton plays a decent center field, but didn't play in the majors in 2004, and has a career OBP of .311. Brown, a Royals prospect who never panned out, has value as a backup outfielder - in fact, he's the ideal player to invite to camp and carry on the roster - very liitle risk involved. But is he an every day starter? Not likely.

Enter Alex Sanchez. Cut loose by Detroit, Sanchez walks into an ideal situation in Tampa. A career .292 hitter, Sanchez immedately becomes the best option the Rays have in camp. Sanchez can play center field, putting Huff in right and Crawford in left until Baldelli returns. But a closer look at Sanchez shows an undiciplined hitter (Sanchez walked SEVEN times last year) and a mediocre runner who uses pure speed instead of instinct (a career 68% basestealer) and has difficulty fielding his position (a career fielding percentage of .975, including 9 errors in 78 games last season).

Is Sanchez really that much of a better option than Joey Gathright? Gathright had a cup of coffee with the Rays last season and looked overmatched at times, but so does Sanchez. Both seem to be similar hitters, with Gathright having more upside.

Or perhaps Jonny Gomes? Gomes needs perhaps another year of seasoning in AAA and would have to play left, pushing Crawford over to center, but Gomes has the power bat that Tampa seems to need. If Gomes could be counted on for 20 home runs and a .240 batting average, it wouldn't be a horrible situation - it'd replicate the numbers that Jose Cruz put up last season.

An even better idea? Matt Diaz. Diaz, who turned 27 two weeks ago, batted .332 for Durham (AAA) last year, hitting 21 home runs and playing a good right field. Diaz also has good speed, stealing 15 bases in 19 attempts last season. For a little more than league minimum, Diaz can get a shot at a starting position and see if he can take his game to the next level while allowing Gathright and Gomes a full year at AAA.

Oh, wait. Diaz was designated for assignment in the beginning of February when the Rays signed Travis Lee and needed a 40 man roster spot - the same day they traded Cruz away.

As easy as it might be to blame the failures of a franchise on their lack of money and "inability to compete", shortsightedness and poor roster management will make sure that the Devil Rays aren't competitive with teams even within their same financial situation.