For decades the threshold by which an
athlete was judged competent to remain in Major League Baseball was determined
by what became known as the ‘Mendoza Line’(1).
The standard was coined in 1979 by teammates Tom Paciorek and Bruce
Bochte in honor of one Mario (Manny) Mendoza whose defensive skills were such
that he played several years in the major leagues despite having a batting
average hovering at or about .200. This,
the gods of baseball had determined, would be the absolute minimum offensive
performance, the point at which one’s defensive skills however formidable could
no longer justify one being in the lineup or on a major league roster. As a struggling player’s batting average plummeted
ever lower, the approach of the much feared ‘Mendoza Line’ would hang over the
hapless ball player like the Grim Reaper waiting for that moment to call him ‘home’
and snatch him back to the corn fields of Iowa or snuff his career
altogether. No more.
With the advent of Free Agency and
multi-year contracts, Major League Baseball has of late presented us with the
proverbial ‘superstar’ free of the constraints of convention and not subject to
the long established norms of the game.
I give to you as Exhibit One, one Adam Dunn.
Known as the ‘Big Donkey’, Dunn was
acquired by the Chicago White Sox as a free agent in the off-season following
the 2011 season. Signing for a reported
four-year 60 Million dollar contract (of which the Sox reportedly paid out 56
Million) Dunn struggled through the 2012 season hitting a paltry .159 in 496
plate appearances. The following season
he struck out a record 222 times in 649 plate appearances raising his average
to .204. The “Sporting News”, making a mockery of sporting awards, promptly
dubbed the ‘Big Donkey” 2013’s “Comeback
Player of the Year”, perplexing future historians of the game as they
ponder just how bad you have to be the previous year to win this honor with a
batting average .004 points above the “Mendoza Line”. Nevertheless the Texan clogged on. In four years he hit a meager .201 for
Chicago, striking out 720 times in 2187 plate appearances, or roughly 1/3 of
the time. As for the remainder he would,
predictably by always going deep into the count, work a walk (321 of those over
nearly 4 seasons); but more often than not hitting directly into a defensive
shift as opposing teams would put the third baseman or shortstop over on the
right side of the infield. Dunn, always
swinging for the fences would, if he got his bat on the ball at all, hit it
into the defense or pop it up. Saying that
he was paid to hit home runs, he hit 106 of those in 4 years, many—all too many
with the bases empty and when the additional run didn’t figure into a win or
loss—the big oaf went about making a mockery of the game.
It cost Ozzie Guillen his job as Manager
of the Sox. Guillen had led the club to
its first World Championship since “Pants” Rowland piloted the franchise in
1917, a feat which should have earned Ozzie a lifetime sinecure. But as the club wound through the 2012 season
with Dunn, in the middle of the lineup and striking out at a record pace,
Guillen was unable to do anything about it.
You see at a cost of 12 million for the
first year of his contract, Dunn was making a bit over $74,000 a game. That’s about $8,250 per inning worked or,
since he played mostly as a Designated Hitter, one would more accurately parcel
it out by plate appearances or at-bats.
Assuming 4.2 plate appearances on average per game every time the ‘Big
Donkey’ came up to bat it cost the club $17,619.00. Paying a player this much money means that a
manager no longer has the option to bench him, for no owner or General Manager
is going to sit idly by and pay out that kind of money for an ‘asset’ that isn’t
being used. And so Sox fans had to
endure nearly 4 long years of watching the big oaf. By the time he left the team, mercifully
traded to Oakland with a couple of months left on his contract, the White Sox had
paid between 18 and 20 Million dollars’ worth of strike outs.
Moreover, when he did hit the ball it
was predictably to the right side of the infield, weak grounders, pop-ups and fly
balls hit right into the shifted defenses.
Rarely did he make plate adjustments to hit the ball to the now open
left side or into the outfield down the left field line. When he did to it, his average would rise
but, after a few games, he would revert to old habits and the same old Dunn
would return. When ‘Hawk’ Harrelson,
calling a televised game, would announce “Here’s Adam” it would send chills
down the spine of any good Sox fan, much like fingernails scraping across a
blackboard,
This is the conundrum in which the
modern game finds itself. The Atlanta Braves had a similar experience signing
Second Baseman Dan Uggla, the Yankees are presently paying Alex Rodriguez tens
of millions as he presents the public with a meager .280 batting average. Pitchers now routinely are paid as much as
$5,000.00 per pitch! Being a legal monopoly and confronted with ‘free
agency’ and player unionization, the owners and players have made their deals
with intent on passing the costs on to the consumer, resulting in skyrocketing
ticket, parking and concession prices. Meanwhile the quality of play continues to
deteriorate as team play unravels, performance slumps, uniforms are worn
improperly. Today we witness in the
sport the emergence of players from college programs and the minor leagues who
simply have not mastered the fundamentals of the game. They cannot make adjustments hitting at the
plate, cannot bunt the ball, cannot field their positions properly, and make too
many base-running mistakes. Baseball has
given us a ‘new age of shoddy’.
Ken Burns, in his television
presentation of “Baseball” informs us that the sport has been central to the American
Experience, playing major roles in establishing social norms from segregating
to integrating American culture. That it
has. What Baseball is presenting today
is the example of what has gone terribly wrong with the economy and, by
extension, the cultural norms. Long
established as a legal monopoly, baseball was able to function by oppressing its
labor force. With the coming of the
Player’s Association and, more importantly, Free Agency the cork was removed
from the bottle sending player compensation, profits, and costs through the
roof. Now it is quite impossible to imagine Major
League baseball as being able to exist in anything other than a state-sponsored
monopoly. Oliver Wendell Holmes was quite
right about that. Another league in
competition would surely likewise send the cost of labor skyrocketing, as it
did when the old American Football League challenged the National Football
League at its inception. Professional
sports, in order to function, nearly demand state protection.
It is one thing to have a monopoly or,
for that matter, an oligopoly or cartel.
These do exist and, sometimes as with the municipal power plant, the
water department, or local hospital are necessary. But to have an unregulated monopoly leads to the kind of dysfunctions that produce
the Adam Dunn’s of this world and a management left powerless to influence
performance. The lack of regulation, as it did in the American Auto Industry
leads to Shoddy. Lack of competition without regulation lead to complacency and
decline. We must have one or the other.
______________
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendoza_Line
(2) http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/dunnad01.shtml
No comments:
Post a Comment