6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

Every Passenger A Terrorist

You can skip this section if you don't care about my airline misadventures.

Spending a few hours in the country's commercial aviation meatgrinder is bad enough when the flights are relatively empty -- i.e., they have a few empty seats, as ours did. The insane demands from the TSA people -- remove your shoes, remove your belts, take off your jackets, etc. -- really aren't so much about actually increasing the security of the flight as increasing the appearance that this end is being accomplished. When the likes of Teddy Kennedy -- and despite the fact that he's a drunk, a submariner, and both at the same time, and yet all the same a Senator of the United States -- finds himself detained because of some double-secret rule, the world is a smaller, and danker place for it. Air travel has become ever more humiliating for paying customers. Groping the passengers' bottoms, it seems, is eating into the airlines' bottom lines.

The airlines still worry about us, but it takes different forms: the love is all in the low price of the ticket. It goes without saying the creature comforts have vanished. For the last leg of the flight, we flew on an Embraer minijet. After only an hour, its seats felt like cinderblocks, a strange touch for a product made in a country known for its sensual pleasures. Drink service only, no meals on an 11:00 flight. It's not like you miss these things; airline food is the butt of jokes for a reason, but with carriers like JetBlue and Southwest making light of their in-flight snacks, the bigger guys have no choice if they want to keep their heads (barely) above water. One of my wife's cousins used to work for one of the majors, and he, too, is now looking for work. Despite projected record travel this year, the airlines are running scared.

Name

All this hassle endows me with a sense of disconnection from the urgencies of the moment, distracting me from the bloody amputation of a key player from the Dodgers' lineup. The Dodgers were just barely a playoff team this year; that Steve Finley, the three-months' Dodger, knocked in the exclamation point himself established, if only partially, DePodesta's cred for assembling a team that could at least make it to the postseason.

Subtracting Beltre subtracts not only his 2004 production, but the selling of a name, a name we've heard in the Dodger lineup since 1998. The Dodger PR machine kept assuring us how great he was.

And that's what names do: names assure. Bonds, Mantle, Ruth, DiMaggio, Robinson, Koufax -- those names tower. Garvey, Cey, Russell, Lopes -- those names give Dodger fans a warm glow, a pleasant memory to keep them fed through the long, dark night of Fox ownership. Is that what we really want? Partly, I think, it is. We want reassurance of quality, of reputation. More, we want a connection to the team, as much as we can feel connected to men paid many, many times what many of us will ever receive in our lifetimes. Losing those names is undeniably painful. Do A's fans wish they could hold onto Tim Hudson? Were they unhappy losing Giambi, Tejada, and before them, McGwire?

But -- the win's the thing. We -- fans -- want wins, most assuredly. We want what the players say they want, rings. If the names interfere with that, they become instantly expendable.

The Winner's Curse

So, Beltre. What did the Mariners get? And, really, were the Dodgers suckers to lay off? Joe Sheehan tries to answer those questions:

Beltre is being paid as if his 2004 performance represents a new established level; I don't think that's a realistic assessment. While not minimizing what he did, there was no change in his walk rate, not much change in his strike-zone judgment, and he continued to show a loss of speed. He's 26, but he has already lost almost all of the speed he came into the league with. What he did last year was add 40 singles and 25 home runs to what he normally does. I don't think all of that is real; I expect him to level off at around .290/.340/.490, a line that will look a bit worse thanks to Safeco Field. If his defensive improvement is real, he can be a five-win player over the life of the deal.

There's almost no way that this contract isn't going to end up disappointing Mariners fans. The Mariners are paying Beltre to have '04 over and over again, and that's not going to happen. Park factors will make his numbers look even worse, adding to the perception of failure. Come 2007 and 2008, the Mariners will be paying $27 million a year to two corner infielders, which is a hard way to build a team unless you're George Steinbrenner. Unless they can develop a lot of inexpensive talent at premium positions, the Mariners will have a hard time assembling a complete team.

Beltre has been overvalued based on one big year at the right time, and the Mariners find themselves stuck with the winner's curse. Given the competition in the division, I would be surprised if Beltre made the postseason as a Mariner, or finished out his contract in the Pacific Northwest.

I'm pretty sure I disagree with Sheehan on one point, but it's one that's fairly insignificant overall, and that is that park factors will make much of a difference. In fact, both Dodger Stadium and Safeco actually amplify home runs a bit, but both suppress hits pretty effectively. In fact, Safeco actually seems to increase the number of doubles hit; and since most of Beltre's value come from his power hitting (2004 .629 SLG), I don't expect this to make a huge dent in his overall production. The difference between Dodger Stadium and Safeco is fairly minimal, and when you factor in the doubles amplification factor, it might even be a positive for him. That said, you can be pretty sure Beltre will suffer some regression; but considering how awful the M's were this year, this is exactly the kind of signing they needed to at least convince the fan base they were serious.

But will it be enough? Rob Neyer didn't think so, either ("two players do not vault the Mariners into contention"); the question I have -- and which I hope to address in a second part to this article -- is, is the reverse true? That is, are the Dodgers reasonably close to contending for the division as it stands? Which is just another way of asking, can the Dodgers realistically replace Beltre's production by adding elsewhere? It's pretty clear, based on the large number of changes that will be needed that the team now has to undergo major surgery in order to just win the division again. Moves like the multiway trade mentioned yesterday will almost certainly be necessary in a market now all but wholly depleted of top-tier free agents. It will be interesting to see who's left standing.