The Baldelli Conundrum

It's one of the cardinal rules of sports: talent always gets a second chance. And a third. And a fourth. And so on.

Carlos Pena was a first round pick by Texas in 1998, but bounced around five different American League organizations before landing an every day job in Tampa last year at age 29 and fulfilling long-deferred projections of stardom. Pena set club records for home runs, RBI, walks, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

Knowing that a talented but enigmatic player might figure it out later on can be a complicating factor for organizational decision-making. If you're the Rays, fresh off finding the shiny quarter that is Carlos Pena, what do you do with Rocco Baldelli? A 26-year-old outfielder, Baldelli is a classic 'what if' guy who flashes tantalizing speed and power between increasing intervals of time lost to injuries.

Drafted in the first round (6th overall) in the 2000 amateur draft out of high school in Warwick, Rhode Island, Baldelli rose quickly through the minors, peaking as the #2 prospect in the land in 2003. He also debuted in the majors in 2003 at the age of 21, putting together a solid season that culminated in a third place finish in the American League Rookie of the Year voting. Perhaps most notably, Baldelli accumulated more than 670 plate appearances over 156 games. In terms of durability, it was all down hill from there.

In 2004, he managed 136 games. Over the subsequent three seasons, he totaled 127 games, missing the 2005 campaign entirely. In between ailments, he nevertheless offered glimpses of something close to greatness - or at least very goodness. In 2006, he put up a triple-slash line of .302/.339/.533, with 16 HR, 57 RBI and 10 SB in just 364 at bats. Pro-rated to 600 at bats, Baldelli would have had 320 total bases, good for 10th in the American League - a fine season for a 24-year-old.

Alas, that Baldelli looks like something of a mirage now.

For all intents and purposes, health is a skill that Rocco does not possess. It's no surprise that he's frustrated and defensive:

I’ve been tested for everything under the sun, the whole gamut, trying to find the stem of what all these problems are that I’m having. I can tell you I don’t have MS, there’s no chance. … I know it sounds bad when I’m denying specific things.

He's right, it does sound bad. Can you ever remember a professional athlete so injury prone that he has to specifically deny having multiple sclerosis?

Baldelli's career is at a crossroads, and it comes at a bad time for him. While he has yet to make an appearance this spring, Tampa is forced to make a decision on Baldelli's 2009 option - essentially whether he fits in the team's plans for the future - by April 1.

Baldelli's 2009 option would cost the team $6 million. Even with baseball's escalating salary structure, that seems like an easy no given his precarious health. However, the buy out is $4 million, so the net cost to the team of retaining Baldelli for 2009 is $2 million.

Smart organizations ignore sunk costs. Two million isn't a huge sum in the baseball universe, but it was more than enough to snap up Pena last year or the talented but flawed Corey Patterson this year, or even to make a big splash in Latin America. For a small market team, every $2 million counts.

Still, you have to wonder if emotion will enter the picture in this case. One doesn't have to delve too far into the past to find a time when Baldelli was viewed as one of the cornerstones of the next (first) great Rays squad. A team never wants to give up a player like that for nothing, particularly if he could come back to haunt them in another uniform. Tampa's fans are scarred by sour memories of Josh Hamilton's departure. Hamilton was drafted by Tampa in 1999, the year before Baldelli, and was the #1 overall pick in the draft. Tampa watched him flash prodigious talent in the minors briefly before losing him to addiction.

When team control over Hamilton lapsed and forced a decision about his future, Tampa made him available in the Rule 5 draft in December 2006. Cincinnati took a chance on him and it paid off. Tampa fans who had suffered through the highs and lows of the Hamilton saga for SEVEN years saw him resurrect his career just months later in somebody else's town. It was like putting down a Russian novel after 700 pages only to hear from somebody else that the book had a Hollywood ending and that Steven Spielberg is doing the film adaptation.

It's a fascinating conundrum. It should be easy to say goodbye to a chronically frustrating player who apparently has legs made of vermicelli.

Yet, having snapped up Carlos Pena for nothing, and having lost Josh Hamilton for nada, haven't the Rays' experienced both the positive and negative reinforcement of always giving talent another chance?

While the numbers of can't miss prospects who miss are legion, teams will always value tools and talent. Some team will gamble on Rocco Baldelli. Will it be Tampa? We'll know soon enough.

Corey Patterson signs, a.k.a. The Year of Living Resurgently - Take Two?

I expected 28-year-old free agent CF Corey Patterson to find a home - most likely on a short deal - quicker than this. Not that he's been any great shakes with the bat, but Corey still offers a very solid glove at a premium defensive position. And, in the shadow of 2007, in which Josh Hamilton, Carlos Pena and Rick Ankiel all forged remarkable comeback/breakthroughs out of the ashes of nearly-ruined careers - let's call it The Year of Living Resurgently - it's reasonable for major league teams to make a small gamble on a once-promising player.

Still, it surprises me to find him signing with the Reds. I want to like this move but it brings into conflict two of my most cherished notions about putting a baseball team together: 1) Thou shalt take inexpensive chances on players with talent and 2) Thou shalt not block prospects with veteran players just because of "experience."

The Patterson signing puts him in direct competition with Jay Bruce for the CF slot, as LF and RF are presumably locked down for Dunn and Griffey. Bruce is the consensus top prospect in baseball, and clearly ready for the major leagues. My biggest fear here is the Reds send Bruce down to AAA because 'he hasn't failed yet' - this was mentioned publicly in the Reds' deliberations over Homer Bailey last year.

[In addition, members of the Rays' front office were recently quoted saying the same thing about Evan Longoria. This seems to be a fervent belief among front offices - that it can be very dangerous for a talented player to face adversity for the first time at the major league level. I'm skeptical, but trying to remain open-minded.]

To be fair, the Reds may just view Patterson as a fourth outfielder, a motivational ploy for Bruce to perform in Spring Training, or an insurance policy in the event Bruce does struggle. The dream scenario for Cincy is probably that Bruce starts out as the most-days CF and Patterson shows enough in limited at-bats where he creates some value to the team either in production or in trade. Certainly the minor league nature of Patterson's deal means there's little financial downside to the Reds if Bruce is truly ready.

So what do the Reds have in Patterson? I suspect Dusty Baker looks at him and sees the "true" leadoff hitter he covets, i.e. a slap singles hitter with speed. Never mind that Patterson won't take a walk to save his life. He has some power and some speed, but he has no patience, so pitchers never throw him anything to hit. Since he's 28 it's probably a poor bet that will change.

Dusty said yesterday, in a burst of spring optimism,

The main thing is he's still young. What's Corey? 28 years old? To me, he hasn't scratched the surface as to what he can do.

That's a nice sentiment, but 28 is pretty far along in the life of professional baseball player. There's a lot of evidence as to what he is and what he isn't.

The thing he gives you is pretty good CF defense, which should not be dismissed. I could see him on a one-year deal with a team that needs OF defense and maybe has a CF prospect who needs one more year in the minors. The team that made sense to me was Atlanta, who has Jordan Schafer making his way through the minors, doing a very nice Grady Sizemore impression with plus defense in CF and a nice power/speed combo on offense. The Braves probably have enough offense to trade a little bat for glove. Patterson's also an Atlanta native, so I thought it made tons of sense on a one year deal, but the Braves seem to believe in Mark Kotsay, which seems a little like wish-casting to me.

The Padres might have considered him, but they also preferred an older, more-injury prone player in Jim Edmonds, who is - see if you can guess - already hurt this spring.

Looking back on Patterson's career for just a second:

2003 Age 23 329 AB 298/329/511 13 HR, 16 SB

2004 Age 24 631 AB 266/320/452 24 HR, 32 SB

2005 Age 25 451 AB 215/254/328 13 HR, 15 SB

For the past few years, he's become a pretty one-dimensional speed player, with key counting stats of 8 HR and 37 SB last year for Baltimore.

Come to think of it, Dusty's probably remembering that 2004 season since he was Patterson's skipper in Chicago that year. I look at that line - warning: BASELESS SPECULATION ™ ahead - and guess that he saw a lot of pitches to hit in 2004 but by the next year pitchers knew he would chase the ball out of the strike zone. I seem to remember his at-bats in 2005 were cut back due to being sent down to AAA rather than injury; a quick check of Baseball Reference confirms he played 24 games for Iowa in '05. In short, we have a guy with a lot of tools who never learned how to lay off the cheese.

It would seem like a correctible flaw just to lay off pitches out of the zone. Of course that's easy for me to say typing this in my Mom's basement.

It's certainly been a long way down for Patterson from the lofty heights of can't miss prospect status. He was Baseball America's #3 prospect in all of baseball in 2000 and #2 in 2001. But a year ago you could have said similar things about Hamilton, Ankiel and Pena. That's the great thing about spring. There's always hope.