Torii Hunter and Mortality

The Twins signed former Tigers (and, prior to that, Angels and, more significantly, Twins) outfielder Torii Hunter to a one-year contract. Hunter, who'll turn 40 next July, signed for $10.5 million in what is pretty clearly a homecoming/last hurrah/mentoring kind of season for him.

His first press conference after signing the contract was, well, interesting.

• He called a reporter who asked a question about gay marriage, to which Hunter has expressed opposition, a "prick." (Feel free to insert the phrase for some reason as many times as you want in that sentence.)
• When asked about how modern fielding metrics grade him as a poor outfielder defensively, he replied, "Whoever believes in that sabermetrics stuff never played the game."
• He continued, in discussing his defense, "I've dropped off--I'm older--but not much...I might be just a little bit above normal."

Joe Posnanski of NBC Sports wrote a great piece about that last comment. Here's a link to the article. He talks about Hunter, but what he's really talking about is getting old. Referring to Hunter's "I might be just a little bit above normal" line, he writes

There's something else in there, something sort of sweet and vulnerable and emotional, even if Torii Hunter himself doesn't realize it. It's damned hard to grow old in baseball. Or, if you prefer, it's just damned hard to grow old.

Posnanski points out that pretty much every superstar was pretty bad at the end of his career. They spent a lifetime learning about the game, expanding their knowledge, but in the end, the body just can't do it anymore, even if the mind thinks it can. Everybody over the age of 30 who's engaged in a physical activity knows what I'm talking about. But stop reading my take, and click on the link to Posnanski's article. Thankfully, his writing skills didn't peak when Hunter's defense did.

The Most Hopeless Teams of 2014

From the 2015 Bill James Handbook: Teams that didn't spend a single day in first place in 2014

• Astros
• Cubs
• Diamondbacks
• Mets
• Reds
• Rockies
• Twins

If we also include teams that didn't ever have first place to themselves (the best they could do was tie for first), add the Indians, Padres, Phillies, and White Sox.

Not that that's necessarily a measure of hopelessness, though it pretty much was for the teams in question: Cleveland finished three games behind Oakland for the second American League wild card.

Speaking of Oakland, here are the teams that spent the most days in first place:

• Tigers, 153 days: Lost Divisional Series 
• Brewers, 150 days: Missed the postseason, six games behind the second wild card
• Athletics, 129 days: Lost Wild Card

Transactions Explained: What Does It Mean When A Player Is "Non-Tendered?"

(Hint: It has nothing to do with meat.)

On December 2, there were a bunch of transactions like this one:

RHP Kris Medlen elected free agency.

The thing is, Kris Medlen didn't really have much of a choice in this "election." The Braves paid the 29-year-old pitcher $5.8 million in 2014. He was eligible for arbitration this year. However, he missed the entire season after undergoing his second Tommy John surgery (his first procedure was in August 2010). In financial terms, they could have tendered, or offered, him a contract for 2015, but they chose not to: They non-tendered him. Players who are non-tendered immediately become free agents. There were 32 players non-tendered by the midnight, December 2 deadline; here's a list. Most will sign contracts, others may be done.

The most circuitous case thus far is Justin Smoak. The Mariners waived the first baseman after the season ended and the Blue Jays picked him up on October 28. Smoak had a contract that would pay him $3.65 million in 2015, but it had a $150,000 buyout, which the Jays exercised. To that point, they had claimed Smoak only to pay him $150,000 to make him go away. The day after the non-tender deadline, though, they signed him to a $1 million contract. So netting it all together, Toronto's paying $1.15 million to Smoak in order save $2.5 million. None of this was underhanded or unexpected:

Justin Smoak says he's expects #BlueJays to decline his $3.65m option for 2015 and renegotiate new deal
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) October 29, 2014

...but it shows the kind of chess game player contracts can become.

Reality Check: Jim Duquette

In my Reality Checks, I've been posting the name of the person or player who's the subject of the statement I'm checking, rather than the speaker. I'm making an exception here for reasons that will become clear.

Jim Duquette mentioned this today on SiriusXM Radio. Duquette was the New York Mets' general manager in 2004 and he had other front office roles with the Mets and Orioles. His show, "Power Alley" with Mike Ferrin is my favorite program on MLB Network Radio.

Duquette and Ferrin were discussing Nick Markakis, the Orioles' right fielder for the past nine seasons and a fan favorite. He signed a four-year $44 million contract with the Braves yesterday, resulting in much gnashing of teeth in Baltimore. 

Duquette mentioned a couple corner outfielders as fairly comparable. Here they are:

Player	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
A	426	1608	221	427	80	18	34	153	63	30	136	375	.266	.329	.401	.730	100
B	419	1696	229	474	79	4	37	163	6	5	159	211	.279	.342	.396	.739	105

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 12/4/2014.

They are both about the same age. Player B is better on getting on base, Player A has a little more pop. Overall, they're pretty close, though Player B is a little better hitter, given his higher OPS and OPS+ (OPS adjusted for home park, 100=league average). Player A has more speed, given the big difference in steals. I'll add a couple things that don't show up here: Neither of them is a particularly good fielder, though Player B has a reputation as such. And to amplify the baserunning angle, A was much more successful at taking an extra base, whether going from first to third on singles (which he did on 25% of opportunities vs. 8% for B), second to home on singles (55% of opportunities vs. 38% for B), and first to home on doubles (45% of opportunities vs. 17% for B). 

Player B is Nick Markakis. Player A is Alejandro de Aza, whom the Orioles acquired in a trade for two minor-leaguers last August from the White Sox after de Aza cleared waivers.

Markakis is an Orioles icon. De Aza is penciled in as a starter but, well, let's just say that there are a lot fewer kids in Charm City with Alejandro de Aza replica jerseys than those wearing Markakis's No. 21.

I'm not saying that they're equals. Markakis is the better hitter, de Aza's the better runner, and Markakis plays a more important defensive position (right) than de Aza (left). To me, that nets out to an edge for Markakis. But it's a slight one, and Duquette made a very sharp observation when he said that the two provide similar value. Had it been de Aza departing, would Orioles fans have cared? Or put another way, does the departure of an Alejandro de Aza-quality player--remember, the White Sox traded him for two fringe-y prospects--warrant the heartbreak expressed by Orioles fans?

The Inscrutable Billy Beane

In my day job as an financial analyst, I followed publicly-traded companies. A big part of the job was analyzing the various moves they made. Often, this pretty easy and, in some ways, rote. Sometimes, it was more complex. And sometimes it really defied explanation. A company would make an acquisition, or get into a new line of business, or do some sort of restructuring, and it just didn't make sense. Investors would call me and say, "Can you figure out the rationale here?" Sometimes, I had to answer "No." However, in some cases (certainly not all), when I knew and respected management, I'd add, "But [name of CEO] is smarter than I am." I'm not saying you'd give the executive a free pass, but my feeling was that if one of these companies did something that didn't seem to make sense, there was a good chance, maybe better than good, that I was missing something because I didn't have the CEO's vision.


Billy Beane has been the Oakland Athletics' general manager since 1997. He's famous because of Michael Lewis's book Moneyball, which came out in 2003, and the movie by the same name starring Brad Pitt in 2011. The book and the movie celebrate how the A's, under his tenure, have remained competitive despite a shoestring budget. 

It wasn't always that way. In 1991, the A's had the highest payroll among the 28 major league teams ($37 million) and drew the fourth-most fans (2.7 million). Since Beane came on board, though, the team's payroll has averaged 24th in the 30-team league, and the team barely drew 2 million in 2014. Nonetheless, they've been competitive. In the 15 seasons beginning in 2000, the A's have been to the postseason eight times and have had only four losing seasons. Their .545 winning percentage during that span trails only the Yankees, Cardinals, Braves, Red Sox, and Angels.

That's why I don't hesitate to say that Billy Beane is smarter than I am. Only eleven teams have had a winning record over the past 15 years, and of those eleven, the A's and the Twins are the only ones with below-average payrolls. (And the Twins have lost 92 or more games in each of the past four seasons.)

All that being said...I don't understand what the the A's are doing with their roster. Let's go back to July. I'm going to list their major moves.

• July 5: Traded outfielder Billy McKinney (minors), shortstop Addison Russell (minors), pitcher Dan Straily and player to be named to the Chicago Cubs. Received pitcher Jason Hammel and pitcher Jeff Samardzija. This was a move to try to take the team over the top. The A's at that point were 53-33, the best record in baseball, but only 3.5 ahead of the hard-charging Angels. Hammel, 31 at the time and in the last year of his contract, was having the best year of his career, 8-5 with a 2.98 ERA. Samardzija, 29 and due to become a free agent in 2016, had a sparkling 2.83 ERA but only a 2-7 record due to lousy run support. Russell was the key to the deal for the Cubs. The 20 year old minor league shortstop is regarded as one of the ten top prospects in baseball.
• July 31: Traded outfielder Yoenis Cespedes and 2015 competitive balance round B pick to the Boston Red Sox. Received outfielder Jonny Gomes, pitcher Jon Lester and cash. More of the same. The A's, at 66-41, still had the best record in baseball, though they were now only 2.5 ahead of the Angels. They traded their left fielder, Cespedes, for two players entering free agency after the season: the 33 year old Gomes, who'd had a good year for the A's in 2012 but was now struggling with a .234 batting average, and Lester, 30, one of the two top left-handed starters in the American League.
• August 24: Purchased catcher Geovany Soto from the Texas Rangers. Soto, 31, has become injury-prone (the last time he played over 100 games was 2011) but he's skilled defensively, and the A's needed catching help, with catcher John Jaso sidelined with a concussion.
• August 31: Traded pitcher Nolan Sanburn (minors) to the Chicago White Sox. Received DH Adam Dunn and cash. Dunn, 34 at the time, was in the last year of a four-year contract he'd signed with Chicago and rumored to be likely to retire after the season (which he did). He was added in a bid to add offense, as in the month since the Lester trade, the A's had collapsed, trailing the Angels by four games when this deal was announced.

Let's take stock of Beane's moves to that point. All of them were an attempt to get the A's to the World Series. Of the players added--Hammel, Samardzija, Gomes, Lester, Soto, and Dunn--only Samardzija remains with the club. The others are free agents and likely to go elsewhere, except Dunn, who's retired. As for the players surrendered, Russell remains a blue-chip prospect, while Cespedes is entering the last year of his contract (he'll be a free agent in 2016) and, it appears, likely to be traded by Boston. 

Given the results for Oakland, one could consider Beane's moves failures. They didn't make it to the Series. They stumbled to the wild card game, finishing 10 games behind the Angels and only one ahead of the Mariners for the second wild card spot. They were eliminated in that game, a wild 12-inning 9-8 loss to the Royals in which they coughed up leads of 2-0 in the first, 7-3 in the sixth, and 8-7 in the twelfth.

But I'd submit that the game turned on a botched play in the first inning. With two outs, Royals DH Billy Butler singled, moving first baseman Eric Hosmer to third, and bringing up the Royals' best hitter, left fielder Alex Gordon. Butler is one of the slowest players in baseball, and Hosmer's nothing special on the basepaths, so it was clearly a situation for the runners to stay put and see whether Gordon could drive in Hosmer to tie the game at two. Instead, on an 0-2 count to Gordon, Butler took off for second before the pitch was thrown. Lester, pitching for the A's, fired to shortstop Jed Lowrie (another free agent unlikely to return to the A's, by the way). Caught in a rundown, Butler turned back to first, and Lowrie threw to first baseman Stephen Vogt. But then Hosmer broke for home, and Vogt threw him out, with Soto applying the tag. Hosmer barreled into Soto, who injured his thumb on the play, forcing the A's to lift him in the third in favor of Derek Norris, who doesn't have Soto's arm. The Royals wound up stealing six bases on Norris, paving the way to their victory. Had Soto stayed in the game, Kansas City likely wouldn't have been able to run wild, likely leading to a different outcome. That busted play in the first--a freak result of a really bad call by manager Ned Yost; who does a delayed double steal with two slow runners and your best hitter at the plate?--ended the A's season, at least from my perspective. Can't blame that on Beane.

Anyway, so now the A's face 2015 without a lot of the players that brought them within a fluke injury on a stupid play of a Divisional Series against the Angels. Here's what they've done since, again ignoring the minor moves:

• November 19: Signed DH Billy Butler as a free agent. Well, that's one way to keep him from making dopey stolen base attempts...Butler is 28. The A's signed him to a three-year, $30 million contract. It's a bit of a headscratcher, as Butler's been in a pretty steep decline since a career year in 2012:

Year	Age	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+	TB	GDP
2012	26	161	679	614	72	192	32	1	29	107	2	1	54	111	.313	.373	.510	.882	138	313	20
2013	27	162	668	582	62	168	27	0	15	82	0	0	79	102	.289	.374	.412	.787	116	240	28
2014	28	151	603	549	57	149	32	0	9	66	0	0	41	96	.271	.323	.379	.702	95	208	21

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 12/2/2014.
Remember, OPS+ is OPS adjusted for home park; Butler's 95 last year means he was 5% worse than the average American League hitter. Butler's moving from a ballpark, Kaufman Stadium, that suppressed homers for right-handed batters (per the 2015 Bill James Baseball Handbook) by 8% over the past three years to O.co Coliseum, which suppresses them by 10%. No favors there.
• November 23: Purchased first baseman Ike Davis from the Pittsburgh Pirates. Another guy whose best year was 2012 (when he hit 32 homers for the Mets), Davis, who earned $3.5 million last year, is eligible for arbitration this year, so he shouldn't be too expensive. (UPDATE: He signed for $3.8 million on December 2.) The thing is, the A's already have an arbitration-eligible lefty-swinging first baseman, Brandon Moss. Presumably, he gets moved to the outfield, where he played 84 games at the corners last year, or traded. (UPDATE: Oakland traded Moss to Cleveland on December 8.) Last year, Davis was traded from the Mets, who play in a park that's OK for left-handed power hitters, to the Pirates, whose PNC Park smothers homers by lefties. But O.co Coliseum does too, so he gains nothing from the change of home field. Davis compiled a .722 OPS for the Mets and Pirates last year, giving him an OPS+ of 105, 5% better than the average National League hitter.
• November 28: Traded third baseman Josh Donaldson to the Toronto Blue Jays. Received shortstop Franklin Barreto (minors), pitcher Kendall Graveman, second/third baseman Brett Lawrie and pitcher Sean Nolin. And everyone's head exploded. I heard someone, I can't remember who, say on Sirius/XM Radio that the A's have traded away their three best position players (Russell, Cespedes, and now Donaldson) over five months, and there's truth to that. Donaldson finished fourth in the American League MVP vote in 2013 and eighth in 2014. He hits for power (68 doubles and 53 home runs over the past two years), has good plate discipline (76 walks in each of 2013 and 2014) and won the Fielding Bible Award at third this year. Plus, he won't be a free agent until 2019, so while he'll get a big raise from the major league minimum of $500,000 he earned in 2014 as he enters arbitration, he's under team control for four more years. In return, the A's received a highly-regarded but young (18 years old) prospect in Barreto, a pair of pitchers with seven innings of big-league service between them, and an infielder who's cooled off considerably in 2013-14 (.716 OPS, 97 OPS+) after a hot start to his career in 2011-2012 (.781 OPS, 111 OPS+) as he's struggled to stay in the lineup (average 88 games played in each of the past two years). 

Okay, I can understand Butler and Davis if the A's are still in it to win it. Even last year's Butler is a big upgrade over what the A's trotted out at DH last season (.215/.294/.343 slash line, .637 OPS that was second lowest in the league). He can't run and he's pretty useless in the field (though he did start 35 games at first last year, his most since 2010), but he's an improvement. Davis drove Mets fans crazy with the gulf between his perceived potential and his performance, but he's been an above-average hitter every year of his career except 2013. Maybe you try to get younger at those positions if you're rebuilding, but you can do worse with Butler at DH (as the A's did last year) or Davis at first (the A's again: .230/.303/.381 slash line in 2014 vs. .233/.344/.378 for Davis) as a contender, provided you've got pop elsewhere in the lineup.

But then the A's traded the major source of that pop. Donaldson led the team last year in at bats, hits, runs, RBI, doubles, homers, walks, batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage. Plus, for the budget-conscious A's, he had four years of team control remaining before free agency (though he's likely to get expensive through arbitration). Maybe the A's think that moving Lawrie away from Toronto's Rogers Centre's artificial turf will help keep him in the lineup, and that'll help return him to his 2011-2012 form. Here's a comparison of Donaldson and Lawrie, 2011-12 and 2012-13:

Player	Years	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
Donaldson	2011-2	75	274	34	66	16	0	9	33	4	1	14	61	.241	.289	.398	.687	91
Lawrie	2011-2	168	644	99	179	34	7	20	73	20	9	49	117	.278	.336	.446	.781	111
Donaldson	2013-4	316	1187	183	329	68	5	53	191	13	2	152	240	.277	.363	.477	.840	135
Lawrie	2013-4	177	660	68	166	27	3	23	84	9	5	46	117	.252	.310	.406	.716	97

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com:
Generated 12/2/2014.

And I'm leaving out one key detail, the only one that in my mind could make this trade work out a lot better than it looks on paper: Age. Lawrie turns 25 in January. Donaldson is 29 next week. He is older than everybody the A's have added since the season ended: everyone in the Blue Jays trade, Davis, and Butler. Four years is a big difference. In terms of peak, Donaldson's unlikely to get much better than he is now and is more likely to get worse than get better. Lawrie, by contrast, is entering what should be his prime years, assuming he can stay healthy. Now, there's a good chance that Donaldson's decline could be better than Lawrie's prime. That OPS gap of 124 points over the past two years leaves plenty of room for Donaldson to remain the better hitter as the calendar affects the two differently. And Rogers Centre's the easiest American League part for right-handed hitters to go deep, a benefit going forward for Donaldson and that Lawrie will no longer enjoy. But a return of the pre-2013 Lawrie could make the trade a lot more even. Then, if either of Graveman or Nolin pan out, and Barreto arrives in a few years and makes everybody forget Addison Russell, the trade will work in the A's favor.

There are a lot of ifs there. And strategically, it represents a change from the win-now strategy implied by the Samardzija, Lester, and, arguably, Butler and Davis deals to a build-for-the-future stance. Beane probably isn't done yet, and he's got his track record in his favor. There are those (yes, smarter than I) who like the trade. But I have a hard time justifying the return he got on one of the most valuable properties in baseball, and I have a harder discerning the A's strategy going forward.

But then, Billy Beane's smarter than I am.

Phillip Hughes, 1988-2014

No, not that Phil Hughes. This Phillip Hughes played cricket, a sport about which we hear next to nothing in the U.S. But on Thanksgiving, the news broke that he died, three days short of his 26th birthday. He suffered head injuries from the cricket equivalent of being hit by a pitch two days earlier.

When I link to other articles here, I'm generally linking to writers at analytically-oriented websites rather than the mainstream media. It's not because I have anything against the traditional journalists, it's just that they don't generally cover the aspects of baseball I'm exploring. Buster Olney of ESPN is one of the best, and he wrote a spot-on piece about Hughes on Friday. You have to be an ESPN Insider to read it (note that if you play an ESPN fantasy game, you're an Insider), but it links what happened to Hughes, a cricketer in Australia, to what goes on in baseball in the U.S.: 

Maybe it's time to evolve to this: Intentionally hitting a batter for any reason is just wrong, and stupid, and dangerous. And if all the players begin to believe this, rather than thinking there is a proper way to retaliate, then progress will be made for all of them.

What happened to Phillip Hughes was an accident. What happens when a baseball player's hit by a pitch often isn't. Think of the game in June when Diamondbacks pitcher Evan Marshall intentionally hit Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun, an idiotic move that resulted in the next Brewers hitter, Jonathan Lucroy, hitting a go-ahead grand slam. Or last August when another Diamondbacks pitcher, Randall Delgado, purposely hit Pirates star Andrew McCutchen. Both times, the batter was hit in retaliation for an Arizona batter being hit earlier in the game. Braun took a pitch to his rear end, but McCutchen was nailed in the back by a 95 mph fastball that put him out of play for 14 games. As Olney points out in his article, major league pitchers can't place a ball perfectly from 60 feet and 6 inches away, and a fastball that's supposed to hit a player in the back could easily hit him in the head instead.

Look, I've written a lot about batters being hit by pitches (here, here, and here), because the rate's been rising and nobody seems to have noticed, much less done anything about it. My conclusion, in the last piece to which I linked, is that rising hit by pitch rates are a consequence of rising strikeouts, because batters are more likely to be hit when the pitcher's ahead on the count. (The most dangerous counts for batters, in terms of the risk of being hit by a pitch), are 0-2, 1-2, 2-2, and 0-1, and those are all paths to strikeouts.) But I never talk about hit batters as "plunking" or something innocuous sounding like that. A baseball is a hard object, thrown at high speed from a short distance to a player who's pretty much defenseless. Phillip Hughes was wearing a helmet much more extensive than a baseball batting helmet, and he was killed, accidentally, by a ball that bounced before it came to him. Why should we allow pitchers to throw straight at a batter? Yes, I know, they've done it for over a century and it's part of the game and all that, but tripping baserunners and lacerating fielders with sharpened spikes used to be part of the game too. That sort of thing was legislated out of the game. So should, as Olney suggests, intentionally throwing at batters. 

Cuban Ballplayers' Names: Y Do You Ask?

In 2014 there were 13 Cuban-born players who appeared in 50 or more major league games. They are:

Player	G	Age	Tm	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	CS	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	Pos
Alexei Ramirez	158	32	CHW	657	622	82	170	35	2	15	74	24	81	21	4	.273	.305	.408	.713	SS
Leonys Martin	155	26	TEX	583	533	68	146	13	7	7	40	39	114	31	12	.274	.325	.364	.689	CF
Yoenis Cespedes	152	28	TOT	645	600	89	156	36	6	22	100	35	128	7	2	.260	.301	.450	.751	LF
Yasiel Puig	148	23	LAD	640	558	92	165	37	9	16	69	67	124	11	7	.296	.382	.480	.863	RF
Adeiny Hechavarria	146	25	MIA	574	536	53	148	20	10	1	34	26	86	7	5	.276	.308	.356	.664	SS
Jose Abreu	145	27	CHW	622	556	80	176	35	2	36	107	51	131	3	1	.317	.383	.581	.964	1B
Dayan Viciedo	145	25	CHW	563	523	65	121	22	3	21	58	32	122	0	1	.231	.281	.405	.686	RF
Yunel Escobar	137	31	TBR	529	476	33	123	18	0	7	39	43	60	1	1	.258	.324	.340	.664	SS
Yasmani Grandal	128	25	SDP	443	377	47	85	19	1	15	49	58	115	3	0	.225	.327	.401	.728	C
Brayan Pena	115	32	CIN	372	348	23	88	18	1	5	26	20	42	2	3	.253	.291	.353	.645	1B/C
Kendrys Morales	98	31	MIN/SEA	401	367	28	80	20	0	8	42	27	68	0	0	.218	.274	.338	.612	DH
Yonder Alonso	84	27	SDP	288	267	27	64	19	1	7	27	17	36	6	1	.240	.285	.397	.682	1B
Aroldis Chapman	54	26	CIN	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0					RP

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/28/2014.

Of them, you'll note, over a third have first names starting with the letter Y. Those ranks will increase in 2015, as the Diamondbacks signed Cuban outfielder Yasmany Tomas to a six-year, $68.5 million contract this week. That'll make six Cuban players with a first name starting with Y. In 2014, the only players appearing in 50+ games with a first name starting in Y that were not Cuban were Mariners reliever Yoervis Medina, Yankees/Padres third baseman Yangervis Solarte (both from Venezuela), Indians catcher Yan Gomes (Brazil), and Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina (Puerto Rico). 

It turns out there's a reason. As this article explains, 

...the preponderance of names starting with the letter Y may reflect the contact Cubans had with Russian advisers sporting names like Yuri and Yevgeny in the years when the Soviet Union was bankrolling Castro's revolution.

That probably explains the Y-names for Medina and Solarte, both hailing from socialist Venezuela. That's also why the Cuban player who saw the most playing time this season, Alexei Ramirez, has a name you'd associate more with Russian than with a Spanish-speaking island.

So there you have it. Cuban ballplayers have first names starting with the letter Y because their parents wanted to pay homage to the USSR.

Sorry, that's all I've got for now. You'll have to find something else to read while you're standing in the checkout line at Target.