Articles

ESPN to Pitchers: ‘How Would You Respond?’

Posted on by Jason Turbow

The unwritten rules seem to be taking a place of prominence in the American media landscape right now. If, as I suspect, the reason many old-timers talked to us for The Baseball Codes was that they didn’t want to see the Code fray any further than it already has in the modern game, they must be delighted with this turn of events.

ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick recently discussed a handful of rules with three prominent pitchers from the 1970s: Jim Palmer, Bert Blyleven and Goose Gossage.

As it happens, we interviewed all three for the book, and their opinions haven’t changed a bit since we talked to them. (Blyleven, in fact, was one of the dozen or so players who actively discussed with us the rule about not running across a pitcher’s mound. He was also the most fiery about it.)

There are some terrific stories in the article, but seeing them in such a truncated format makes it strikingly clear that they must all eventually come around to one thing: retaliation. No matter what the offense—showing up a player, stealing signs, peeking at pitches, etc.—the stories that illustrate them are inevitably punctuated with baseballs aimed at ribcages.

The same held true for the vast majority of the stories we elicited from players. It’s why the retaliation chapter is the book’s biggest.

That’s the beauty of the Code (especially when the interview subject is a pitcher): the concept of making sure violations don’t happen again on your watch.

Update: Ex-Houston Astros All-Star and current baseball blogger Morgan Ensberg has posted an interview with himself in which he addresses many of these issues from a hitter’s standpoint.

– Jason

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Alex Rodriguez, Dallas Braden, Don't Cross the Pitcher's Mound

Braden Still Talking

Posted on by Jason Turbow

A’s pitcher Dallas Braden sat down with our old pal, Comcast SportsNet Bay Area’s Mychael Urban, to answer just a few more questions about the A-Rod incident.

As usual, he pulls no punches. The chance to see and hear his response (rather than reading a transcript of it) offers better insight into what he’s actually thinking.

For some reason, WordPress doesn’t like Comcast’s embed code. Which means you’ll have to go to their site to see the clip.

– Jason

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Don't Quit on Your Teammates, Milton Bradley, Seattle Mariners

Bradley on the Outs in Seattle. A Reparable Rift? Unlikely

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Milton Bradley’s at it again. According to Mike Salk of ESPN’s radio affiliate in Seattle, the volatile slugger started into plate umpire Kerwin Danley in the sixth inning, after striking out looking with the bases loaded.

Apparently, things got so heated that Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu interceded, telling Bradley to back off. Shortly thereafter, a source told Salk, Bradley approached his manager, said, “I’m packing my stuff. I’m out of here,” and left the dugout, the ballpark—and maybe the Mariners organization.

From Geoff Baker‘s Seattle Times blog:

Wakamatsu had Ryan Langerhans warm up immediately and followed Bradley into a tunnel between the dugout and clubhouse to talk him off the ledge and tell him not to quit on his teammates. At some point, Bradley was about to return to the dugout, but once he saw Langerhans playing left field in his place, left again and returned to his locker.

From there, he quickly packed and exited the stadium with the game still in progress.

General manager Jack Zduriencik said all the right things afterward, about how Bradley was still an important part of the team, and how Seattle needs him to be successful.

The reality, however, is somewhat different. Bradley unmistakably turned his back on his teammates, hanging them out to dry in a game they trailed only 3-1. This is akin to not leaving the dugout during a fight—maybe worse.

It’s why Zach Duke addressed his team through the media just last week after failing to retaliate for multiple Code violations by the Dodgers, offering a public apology when a private one might have sufficed. He knew the possibility of losing the respect of his teammates was real, and he did what he had to do to stanch the bleeding.

Bradley, however, is on his eighth team in 11 seasons. He left one of them–the Cubs–over this very issue just last year, departing Wrigley Field before their season-closing game was over. They couldn’t trade him fast enough. (It might say something that what seems to be the only team willing to take him demanded that Chicago take on Carlos Silva’s bloated contract in return.)

Unlike Duke, Bradley doesn’t have the Seattle clubhouse, because he doesn’t know the Seattle clubhouse. If anything, his teammates are more aware of his most-prime-candidate-for-anger-management-therapy-in-the-league reputation far better than they know the guy himself; they’ve hardly spent two months with each other.

If Bradley wants a job in the major leagues—be it in Seattle or elsewhere—he’s going to need to make reparations, and in a pretty major way. He keeps getting chances because he’s unmistakably talented. Never before, though, has he crossed the line to potential clubhouse pariah quite so convincingly as he might have last night.

Update: In the home clubhouse at Safeco Field today, Bradley took the floor in a closed-door meeting, and talked about the issues he had to work out. (As is the way with closed-door meetings, only the vaguest details have been released.)

Bradley also met with manager Don Wakamatsu and GM Jack Zduriencik, in which, wrote Geoff Baker in the Seattle Times, he asked for their help in dealing with turmoil in his life.

Zduriencik later met with the media, and talked about Bradley dealing with “some very personal and very emotional things in his life right now,” and how the team is going to help Bradley through whatever personal trauma he’s experiencing.

If everyone follows through and this affair has a happy ending, it would be a splendid turn of events. How many other teams have said the same thing about Bradley, however? The guy went so far as to seek counseling for his anger while a member of the Dodgers in 2004.

Perhaps the best thing he has going for him at the moment is the Mariners’ putrid offense. After all of this, it could still be that they need him more than he needs them, which is the bedrock for second chances.

Update II (May 6): The Mariners have placed Bradley on the restricted list while they reevaluate his situation.

– Jason

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Andrew McCutchen, Jack Taschner, Los Angeles Dodgers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Ramon Ortiz, Retaliation, The Baseball Codes, Zach Duke

Additional Thoughts on the Zach Duke Non-Incident

Posted on by Jason Turbow

The lack of retaliation by Pirates pitcher Zach Duke when it was so clearly mandated has raised some interesting questions. For example, why didn’t Pirates manager John Russell—who by multiple accounts was enraged at Duke’s inaction—simply order his pitcher to get the job done?

Once, this would have been a no-brainer. In the 1940s, Leo Durocher was known to leave hundred-dollar bills in the locker of Whitlow Wyatt as a reward when the pitcher threw at players’ heads. Numerous opponents recall longtime manager Gene Mauch shouting for his pitcher to “spin his helmet.”

Heck, when Casey Stengel managed the Boston Braves, he was once so upset when one of his rookie pitchers—appearing in just his second big-league game—failed to retaliate according to expectations that he sent the guy back to the minors. It was four more years before Warren Spahn returned to the big leagues (although the U.S. Army also had something to do with his delay), a turn of events that Stengel later called the biggest blunder he ever made as a manager.

Modern managers, though, are different. Now that players constitute multi-million-dollar investments, nobody wants to take responsibility should a fastball go awry.

Pitchers are occasionally encouraged in vague terms (“Do what you have to do”), but rare is the order to actually drill somebody.

(One noteworthy exception to this trend is Ozzie Guillen, who ordered his own rookie pitcher, Sean Tracey, to hit a batter in 2006. When, like Spahn, Tracey failed to carry out his manager’s wishes, he was, like Spahn, banished to the minors.)

Instead, pitchers are expected to understand this responsibility. Should a young player fail to appropriately read a situation, a good talking-to will usually do the trick. For a veteran like Duke, however, significantly more is expected.

Another question involves the window of opportunity. Duke had the chance to directly retaliate against the pitcher who twice threw at McCutchen—Ramon Ortiz came to the plate for the first time this season in the sixth inning—and didn’t do anything about it.

The following inning, when Pirates reliever Jack Taschner sent a ball behind the head of the first hitter he faced, Andre Ethier, it was a clear message sent.

So is the case closed, especially if Ortiz manages to hit against the Pirates again? The vagaries of scheduling make this a mostly moot point; as of May 2, the Pirates and Dodgers had faced each other six times, and will not meet again until 2011. (We’re putting our money on them failing to square off in October.)

Not that it would have mattered. Duke had his chance and completely whiffed; Taschner got a measure of revenge with his message pitch, even though he didn’t actually hit anybody.

If the Pirates respond next season, it will open old wounds in a hurry. As in the wrong as the Dodgers were in this instance, Pittsburgh would be just as guilty if they choose to pursue this into 2011—and the smart money’s on them staying far, far away from even the appearance of vengeance.

That is, unless Zach Duke decides he has something to prove.

– Jason

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Andrew McCutchen, Jack Taschner, Ramon Ortiz, Retaliation, Zach Duke

Pirate Protection Falters; Duke Takes Blame

Posted on by Jason Turbow

There are two prominent theories about why Pirates pitcher Zach Duke called himself out in the media for having failed to appropriately retaliate Saturday, after the Dodgers took one too many shots at Pittsburgh outfielder Andrew McCutchen:

  • Having failed to adequately protect his teammate, he realized that the best way to regain respect from within his clubhouse was to publicly recognize his failure.

or

  • He lost his mind.

Pitchers just don’t talk about this kind of thing to daily newspaper reporters. It would have been an especially egregious discussion had Duke actually targeted a member of the Dodgers (admitting one’s intentions in this regard provides the  commissioner’s office with all the ammunition it needs to levy a suspension), but even the simple acknowledgement that it needed to be done raised many an eyebrow.

The backstory: McCutchen hit a home run in the first inning against Dodgers pitcher Carlos Monasterios, making his first major league start. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette suggested that McCutchen might have showboated just a touch with a “celebratory gesture” as he rounded second, although the outfielder denied having done anything improper, telling reporters that “I play the game right.”

That Monasterios hit Lastings Milledge and Ronny Cedeno in the second inning could be viewed as retaliatory, or simply the mark of a nervous young pitcher failing to hit his spots. Pittsburgh’s lack of response was defensible.

In the fifth, however, Dodgers reliever Ramon Ortiz first buzzed McCutchen, then dropped him with a fastball spotted directly at his head, which the slugger managed to avoid.

The prescribed reaction to this was clear. Even if Ortiz’s pitches were unintentional (although it’s useful in this situation to remember Don Drysdale‘s maxim that the second purpose pitch is the most important, because it shows that the first wasn’t a mistake), placing a fastball near a hitter’s head is impossible to ignore. Response was mandatory.

Duke didn’t deliver, pitching two more innings. To make matters worse, he had the rare chance to face Ortiz himself, in his first plate appearance since 2007, and instead of sending a message, struck him out on four pitches.

Instead, it was Pirates reliever Jack Taschner (who took over in the seventh), who promptly threw a fastball behind Dodgers slugger Andre Ethier.

The message was clearly received; the Los Angeles dugout came alive with players telling Taschner at high volume exactly what they thought of him, his tactics and his mother.

Afterword, many members of Pittsburgh’s clubhouse were livid. The Post-Gazette went so far as to report that Pirates manager John Russell was “privately livid” about the situation. “It can be expected that the coaching staff will address Duke’s role, specifically,” read the report.

All of which is reason for Duke to be repentant, fully and publicly. This sort of self-inflicted humiliation serves as resounding proof to his teammates of lessons learned. (Why it took a six-year vet so long to figure it out is another matter entirely.)

Duke is the best pitcher on an atrocious Pirates staff. His team has little choice but to forgive him, but his leash in this regard will be exceptionally short. Next time a similar situation comes up on his watch, expect a vigorous response.

Update: Why didn’t Russell just order Duke to respond? Find out here.

– Jason

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Review

Love From Boston

Posted on by Jason Turbow

And here I was, thinking that the review season for baseball books was over.

Then comes the Boston Herald, calling The Baseball Codes “the most amusing sports book you’ll read this year.”

(They also use the space to get in a dig at A-Rod. Coincidence?)

– Jason

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This Week in the Unwritten Rules

This Week in the Unwritten Rules

Posted on by Jason Turbow

April 26
In light of the debate about youngster Dallas Braden’s propriety in calling out Alex Rodriguez, we look at some instances of players verbally overstepping their bounds.

April 27
Mark Teixeira annihilated Angels catcher Bobby Wilson in a play at the plate. Was he within his rights? You be the judge.

April 28
There are proper and improper methods of “deking,” or throwing phantom (decoy) tags down on unsuspecting base runners. In a game against Philadelphia, Giants shortstop Edgar Renteria deked Ryan Howard perfectly.

April 29
An unwritten rule prohibits teammates from speaking ill of each other in the press. You wouldn’t know it by Dodgers GM Ned Colletti, but the same holds true for management.

April 29
Chris Tillman, a Triple-A pitcher in the Orioles system, no-hit the Gwinnett Braves. In the fifth inning, he said in the Baltimore Sun’s Orioles Insider blog, “I looked up and noticed what was going on, and then I started noticing my teammates were sitting farther and farther away from me in the dugout, giving me the cold shoulder.”

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