More post-Kendall news

Ed Eagle's long report of the trade and the fallout contains more stuff that was news to me.

Eagle quotes Littlefield talking along the lines of the Captain A-Rod argument I've made in defense of a trade in the past:

Despite Kendall's production, his contract had become a burden to an organization looking to rebuild around a core of young and inexpensive players. Kendall still has three years and $34 million remaining on the six-year, $60 million contract he signed prior to the 2001 season. He was expected to take up about one-fourth of the Bucs' projected $40 million payroll in 2005.

"The formula of one player eating up a significant portion of the payroll doesn't work," said Littlefield. "You can look at other teams, you can look at other years and it's just not a formula that is going to enable you to have a lot of success."

A winning team is a fused group, a collection of individuals who are all empowered and capable of rising up and leading in the short-term. Aaron is the hero of game 1, but no matter that he strikes out five times in game 2; Bobby hits two home runs and the team wins again. Aaron and Bobby play terribly in game 3, but Clay strikes out ten and Daniel has a big eighth-inning triple. There can be no permanent leadership; no one person is capable of winning every game by himself. Trot out all the platitudes that have been offered about the 2002-2004 New England Patriots and see if they don't fit this description.

No team can be perfectly egalitarian, but too much pecking order hurts a team's ability to compete. There can be no division of caste in a winning team. The ramifications are many. For example, when one guy makes too large a share, it puts an impossible burden on his shoulders. There's no way he can perform well enough to "earn" that share of the total payroll. Teammates are not impressed with anything less than perfection, which is not possible to achieve. There's more sides to this but it's probably not worth an even long description. Suffice it to say that a team needs to be a rough circle of rough equals if it wants to win a lot of games. There's no other way to create the environment in which the players all take turns being The Man. And unless everyone gets a chance to be The Man, there's no way a baseball team is going to win a lot of games.

I have no idea what Kendall's role was in the chemistry of the clubhouse. I've never met him and I've never been in the clubhouse. But I can see why, in theory, the Captain A-Rod model is doomed to fail. I was never surprised when the Rangers failed to win with him. He was another owner, a player and co-manager, out there on the field, and all the wisdom and technique he had to share in practice only made his teammates look small on game day. Players can't be feeling or looking small if you want to have a winning team. So, I was not surprised to see them win without him. And of course he fits in just fine with the Yankees.

From college I remember Sartre's meditations on the French Revolution. Go read that if you really want to get deep on this subject. No mob will storm the Bastille while a member of the gentry leads them. It's basic human nature: a certain degree of equality is a prerequisite for meaningful team coordination. I'm not sure how Kendall was perceived by his 300K mates, but it didn't look good on paper.

I would like to see a study that compared income distribution and won/loss record. I would expect to see a correlation between payroll and winning, sure, but also a correlation between the equity of payroll distribution and winning. The fact that players have to put in three years at 300K-350K would probably exaggerate differences, however. There will also be guys on the payroll who aren't really on the team - Chan Ho Parks and Darren Dreiforts, for example - who make a shitload but aren't really in the mix of everyday players the way Lordship A-Rod was at Texas. This is a "team chemistry" thing. And it's a strength and a weakness of these arguments that they can't be settled with "advanced metrics." There's just no way any fan is going to know enough of what is going on behind-the-scenes to measure the degree to which the players intimidate, awe, resent, or just plain fuck with each other in the clubhouse.

Back to Eagle's report. Eagle also quotes Littlefield as suggesting the Pirates will get a catcher, but not necessarily a starting one:

With the durable Kendall out of the picture, backup catcher Humberto Cota will see more playing time. However, Cota, who has batted .241 with five home runs and 10 RBIs in 60 career big league games, will not be handed the starting job outright. Littlefield hopes to add a veteran backstop to the mix this offseason.

"We'll probably go out to get a catcher to add to Cota," said Littlefield. "I don't know that we have to designate one as a starting catcher necessarily. We do have a good feeling about Cota in the time that we've had him."

Because the Pirates recently discovered that catching prospect J.R. House still has a minor league option remaining, it is unlikely that the 25-year-old will be in competition for a starting job out of Spring Training.

I look forward to seeing the position settled. The temptation to run with Cota and House is pretty strong, especially if Craig Wilson could catch one day a week, but I have no idea how the Cota/House tandem would handle the young guys and/or if Craig Wilson remains fit for catching duties. Those would be good questions for Paul Meyer or Ed Eagle or David Littlefield. Somebody please ask them.

Finally, Redman said the right things:

"Six big league seasons and five different teams, I'm getting used to it," said Redman. "I'm glad to be back in the National League. I enjoyed it the one year I was in Florida. I look forward to coming there and pitching at PNC Park."

When asked if he was disappointed to be traded to a rebuilding team after spending the previous two seasons in the thick of playoff races, Redman cautioned reporters not to be so quick to count out the young Bucs' chances next season, using his 2003 Marlins team as an example of a club that came out of nowhere to win it all.

"No one expected them to be a championship-type team, especially the first two months of the season," said Redman. "We ended up going on and winning the World Series. Anything can happen in this game of baseball."

I like him already. He's my sleeper pick for the 2005 NL Cy Young award.

...bkopec of Batting Third thinks all the talk about having too much payroll in one player is a bunch of hooey. He found a number of teams with players eating a large share of the payroll and they weren't all bad. To that I'd say I'm not sure it refutes the claim that a team has to be a fused group, or a band of equals, to really succeed. I'm sure this is true in the "team chemistry" department. And while I might be right, bkopec is right to point out that the actual salary numbers probably don't tell us what we need to know about the effect uneven payroll can have on a team's ability to compete. Kendall certainly doesn't seem to have been a problem, and I'm definitely not laying the 2004 won-loss record at Kendall's feet. But he was due for a raise and we do have a whole bunch of other arbitration-eligible players who have also earned a raise. Anyway, huzza for bkopec for writing on the subject.