Aside from metal and composite in the 1970s, the baseball bat hasn’t undergone any major changes in the past century or so. And for professional baseball bats, the only changes have been subtle – thinner handles and maybe a different wood, such as maple instead of ash.

The Seattle Mariners are trying something new this spring, however, a bat developed by Baden Sports, a company that has specialized in manufacturing balls for many sports. The handle has no knob and instead is contoured like an axe. The company hired former Mariners slugger Jay Buhner to promote the bat.

“It’s a big-time different feeling, but it’s a great concept,” said Mariners infielder Jack Hanrahan, to the Seattle Times. “It feels weird, obviously, because there’s no knob to it, so the first couple of swings it feels like it’s going to fly out of your hands.”

According to the Times story, one benefit is it keeps the “face grain” facing the pitcher, which means the bat shouldn’t break as often, and contact should be more solid, in theory.

The bat has received conditional approval by Major League Baseball, and the Mariners and Padres (who share the same Arizona complex) are likely to try them out in some Cactus League games.

But for players who have swung bats with the same shape for their entire lives, it will undoubtedly feel a bit strange, which is why the company is moving slowly. But the early reviews seem to be promising from players who have used the bats.

New bat’s shape goes against the grain originally appeared on About.com Baseball on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 11:07:33.

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So the big headline of the day is that Manny Ramirez doesn’t see himself with the Dodgers next season.

But no need to hold your breath, L.A. fans: You hold the cards. There’s a year to go until it matters. You’d get two draft picks if you offer him arbitration. And you probably don’t want him back, anyway.

If Ramirez has a good season, he’s still not going to be worth $22.5 million, which is a bigger amount than he’s worth already. A major pay cut for the same situation would not go over well with Manny, who already has motivational issues.

Going off last year’s stats (reduced by PED suspension and injury), he was paid more than a million per homer in 2009. And if has a good year in 2010 – and that’s a major if, as he turns 38 in May – he’ll be worth something in 2011. But nowhere near $22.5 million.

He’s probably a designated hitter – a position he was practically born to play – and that takes 16 of the 30 teams out of the equation already. And then take away the teams with established DHs – such as David Ortiz back in Boston – and that takes another chunk of teams away.

But there’s one destination that makes a heck of a lot of sense on a short-term deal. They have no true full-time DH this year, which means there’s an opening. And it would be a strike that would be monumental.

One year, $10 million or so to come to his hometown to wear pinstripes, perhaps?

Manny Ramirez on the Yankees. What would Red Sox fans think? 

Is Manny planning a Gotham move? originally appeared on About.com Baseball on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 20:01:46.

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College football coaches has succession plans all the time. Jimbo Fisher has taken over for Bobby Bowden after two years of being a coach in waiting at Florida State. Texas has a plan for Will Muschamp to take over for Mack Brown someday.

And now a baseball team is trying that move in Cleveland, with Mark Shapiro moving up in the front office later this season, and Chris Antonetti, an assistant general manager, taking over as GM.

Tough to get promoted after losing 97 games, but it’s billed as that for Shapiro, who will become team president. But it’s also interesting because of this: Shapiro is just 42 years old. Team president typically a kind of stepping off point for somebody older who wants out of the grind. Antonetti is 35 in what is increasingly a young man’s game in the front office.

The Indians lost 97 games last year, so the timing is a tad interesting as well. Shapiro had to fire good friend Eric Wedge as manager. But it’s billed as a promotion for both, and on a team that needs a shake-up after tearing apart the core of their team the last two years.

“I feel like the skepticism just shows the passion of the fans,” Shapiro said to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “We’re only two years away from 2007 (a division championship). The next time we get to that threshold we want to push over it.”

Indians have succession plan, even without much recent success originally appeared on About.com Baseball on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 22:49:17.

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This is the year, right? The year you’ll be so ready for fantasy baseball draft day, the all-star sleepers will flow to you in every round.

So yeah, snow is covering just about every state in the union right now, but it’s not too early to get ready for the season.

More and more fantasy coverage is coming in the next couple of weeks, but here’s some suggested reading to get you started.

2010 Fantasy Central: For our position rankings for catchers, infielders and outfielders. Pitchers and DHs are on their way in the coming days.

Sabermetrics in fantasy sports: You could buy a Baseball Prospectus membership, but we’ve got a little bit of what you need here for free, too.

Fantasy baseball FAQ: Is this the year to get in the game? Tailored for beginners and young veterans, it’s how to play fantasy baseball.

Fantasy baseball stat services: Are you a commissioner? Set up your league on one of these popular web services – the big guys and the little ones, the pay ones and the free ones.

Lots more is coming – check back often this winter/spring for your fantasy fix.

Never too early for fantasy draft prep originally appeared on About.com Baseball on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 23:25:46.

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Frequent readers of this blog know the drill. Prominent player retires and the argument begins. Hall of Fame or not?

Because unlike the turnstile-like Halls in football and basketball, there are great baseball players who weren’t great enough to be in Cooperstown. That’s the way it should be, and most everybody agrees with that.

That’s why I didn’t immediately punch the Frank Thomas ticket after he announced his retirement last week. Maybe it’s because he didn’t play last season and nobody really noticed. Maybe it’s because he didn’t have many Frank Thomas-like seasons for the past decade because of injuries. Even when the White Sox won the World Series in 2005, Thomas was injured and didn’t play.

But I’m coming around now because I forgot how great Thomas was from 1991 to 2000. (And thanks to the great Joe Posnanski for pointing that out.) Thomas was a freaky combination of average and power, with a career batting average of .301 with 526 home runs (18th all-time) and 1,704 RBI (22nd all-time). Thomas also got on base a lot – ninth all-time in walks with 1,667. His 1994 season, the one shortened by the infamous strike, was among the best ever: .353 with 38 homers and 101 RBI in 113 games. His on-base percentage was .487, his slugging percentage .727, the best in the AL in 36 years. That made his OPS an incredible 1.217. Here are the only players with a higher OPS (on-base plus slugging) in a season: Barry Bonds (ahem), Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, Mark McGwire (ahem again) and Jimmie Foxx. Now that’s some company.

And later in his career, Thomas was an advocate for drug testing and ridding the game of the steroid scourge.

Unless Edgar Martinez makes a voting surge in the next three years, Thomas is certain to be the second player in the Hall whose primary position was designated hitter. (The other is Paul Molitor.) But because Thomas is eligible the same year as two sure-fire Hall of Famers – 300-game winners Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux – not to mention potential holdovers such as Curt Schilling. That ballot might be a bit too crowded for a first-ballot selection.

What do you think? Is Frank Thomas a Hall of Famer? First-ballot? You make the call.

A Big Hurt for Hall of Fame chances in 2014? originally appeared on About.com Baseball on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 00:29:53.

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Those of you out there who believe pitchers get the kid gloves treatment will love this one.

Baltimore Orioles pitcher Brad Bergesen, a second-year righty who is being counted on in the team’s rotation, injured his pitching shoulder while filiming a TV commercial for the team back in December. He won’t be able to participate in early spring training drills.

“I think initially I will probably be 10 days behind everyone, but I am not coming off a major arm injury or surgery,” Bergesen said to the Baltimore Sun.

Bergesen said he hadn’t thrown off a mound since taking a line drive off his shin in late July, which ended his rookie season. He went 7-5 with a decent 3.53 ERA in 2009. “The production company that came in wanted it to be as realistic as possible. And I was trying to please, and I got caught up in a moment,” he said to the Sun.

Orioles president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail said these offseason shoots will be more closely monitored in the future. Gee, you think?

This is one of the best weeks of the year, by the way. Pitchers and catchers report Thursday.

Orioles hurt their own pitcher in first bizarre injury of 2010 originally appeared on About.com Baseball on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 09:55:38.

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One of the great sluggers of the past decade is hinting at retirement.

Carlos Delgado, who hit .271 with 38 home runs in 2008, missed most of last season with the New York Mets after hip surgery, and he’s not finding the free agent market to his liking this winter.

“I have to analyze all the options that I have and, another important thing, I’m not going to sign a contract just to say I signed,” Delgado said to Primera Hora, a newspaper in Puerto Rico, according to MLB.com. “You have to look for the best situation for yourself at the moment.”

Delgado has 473 career homers, which certainly isn’t enough for the Hall of Fame in this era. And Delgado, 37, still should have a couple of good years left, but maybe not as a full-time player. This all might be a ploy to get the best offer on the table before spring training camps open next week.

“There are [interested] teams in both leagues, but I’m not going to go crazy just to say I signed,” Delgado said. “When the moment comes and the right situation comes up, I’ll know what to do. We are talking. There are a few points that have yet to be discussed.”

Cold market might send Delgado packing originally appeared on About.com Baseball on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 00:04:16.

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The Hall of Fame class of 2014 will have an Atlanta flavor, featuring a couple of 300-game winners.

Tom Glavine announced his retirement on Thursday, taking a job with the Braves as a special assistant to team VP John Schuerholz, who built one of the great pitching staffs in history with Glavine, Greg Maddux (Hall of Fame class of 2014) and John Smoltz (perhaps class of 2016?).

“You know the expression the time of your life — it was,” Glavine said Thursday.

It was a messy divorce last season between the Braves and Glavine, a 305-game winner (fourth among left-handers all-time) who was cut in June before he even threw a pitch and never found another team to pick up his contract.  Things were frosty between Glavine and GM Frank Wren after the move but Wren was proven correct when rookie Tommy Hanson blossomed in Glavine’s spot in the second half of the season. But the team took a bad PR hit, a lesson on how not to handle the release of a team legend.

Because Glavine didn’t appear in a game in 2009, he only has to wait four years for the Hall of Fame call.

Glavine, 43, will also do some TV work with Fox Sports South for Braves games.

Another big star of the 1990s also announced his retirement on Thursday, as Frank Thomas said he won’t attempt a comeback this season. Thomas, with 521 career homers, also didn’t play in 2009, but probably won’t be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Glavine calls it a career, patches things up by taking gig with Braves originally appeared on About.com Baseball on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 01:33:41.

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Every big contract for a pitcher contains big risk.

It’s easier to make an argument that a player such as Albert Pujols or Alex Rodriguez are worth their mega-money because they’re in the lineup every day, and while both have been injured, it hasn’t threatened their careers.

Pitchers are a lot different. One tear in a tiny shoulder or elbow ligament and it could be a two-year process for a return, and there’s no guarantee they will ever be the same.

The Boston Red Sox built some protection into their five-year, $82.5 million deal with John Lackey with that in mind. Keep in mind that Lackey has never been seriously injured – he’s one of the more durable pitchers in the league. But he’ll turn 32 this year, and the arms of 32-year-old pitchers have thrown a lot of baseballs.

From Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe:

The Red Sox found there was enough concern about the wear and tear on Lackey’s elbow to warrant contract protection for the elbow. They did it in a very creative manner, which was subject to approval by both Major League Baseball and the Players’ Association in that the team can pick up a sixth-year option at the minimum salary if Lackey undergoes Tommy John surgery anytime during the five-year stint.

So if Lackey has the radical elbow surgery at any point, the Red Sox can capitalize on that by having Lackey at a “bargain” rate in an additional year. It’s within the context of a story about Josh Beckett and his shoulder (which is a more tricky surgery to come back from).

It’s interesting that the players’ union was willing to go along with that, although I’m sure having a five-year deal off the top helped that along. They probably wouldn’t be happy about that in a short-term deal for the oft-injured Mike Hampton, for instance. But now that the cat’s out of the bag, more teams are going to try to be creative to protect themselves.

Red Sox’s Lackey deal is a groundbreaker originally appeared on About.com Baseball on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 12:29:13.

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He’s 25 years old and looks like a skateboarder, more than a little like one of the lead characters from the 1993 movie “Dazed and Confused.” (And he apparently sometimes acts like a character from the film as well.)

But Tim Lincecum’s value isn’t confusing at all – it’s just in dispute heading into an arbitration hearing in which the teams are a whopping $5 million apart. Lincecum asked for $13 million next season. The San Francisco Giants countered with $8 million. And to this point, they haven’t come up with anything in the middle, and if it goes to arbitration, it will be one figure or the other.

It’s uncharted for a pitcher who has won two Cy Young Awards to be so young, which is the biggest reason why it’s been hard to come up with a figure. Lincecum is entering his fourth season.

“At some point. something’s going to get figured out,” Lincecum said, according to the Associated Press, before a Giants team FanFest on Saturday.  “Either way, I try not to have ill feelings about anything. I just try to come out here and the whole purpose is to try to help the team win. It’s not about a grudge match. When it gets finalized, it will be good. I just try to take in what I can in the experience and not be too oblivious to everything but also not getting too involved, either. I let my agent do his job and I’ll just do mine.”

And Lincecum knows that the Giants might have to bring up those marijuana charges to try to win their case with the arbitrator. That might turn out to be one expensive traffic stop.

“I’m not going to try to take any ill regard to it at all — try to take it as constructive criticism, I suppose,” he said.

Lincecum’s pot arrest could put $5 million deal up in smoke originally appeared on About.com Baseball on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at 14:23:22.

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