To many,

Pluto has also written more books about Cleveland sports than anyone, ever. One of them, Burying the Curse: How the Indians became the best team in baseball, is the subject of today’s review.

Published in 1995, at the height of the Indians dominance in the American League’s Central Division, Pluto chronicles how a historically putrid franchise rose to the top of MLB. The Indians had been cursed for years, Pluto reports, with bad drafting and ownership that wasn’t willing to put up the money for talent that could actually win on the field.

In the book, Pluto picks apart the important parts of a season that Tribe fans will remember for the rest of their lives. Games are highlighted in which former Indian teams would have certainly thrown in the towel, but that this version kept fighting for a victory, even if it took extra innings to do so.

One of those games was the game in which the Indians clinched their first division title in more than 40 years. They were leading the division by almost 25 games and had a ton of baseball left to play, even in the strike shortened season, but it was a joyous day for those on the shores of Lake Erie. For the first time in nearly half a century, their team was being heralded as the team to beat.

As most know, that season did not end the way most dream stories do, as the Indians lost to the Atlanta Braves in the World Series. This book does a good job of depicting the actions and feelings of the Indians faithful during and after that season. Even though many wanted the World Series win, the Indians were still thrown a large parade when they returned home, and to outsiders, it would have seemed like they won it all.

Perhaps fans and writers alike were so confident because they knew the nucleus of the team was there to stay for a few more years, so bringing the real championship home seemed like little more than a formality.

Overall, Pluto does a great job painting the picture, an accurate picture of that memorable season in 1995, and he does it from somewhere between a fan and a journalist’s perspective. Cleveland had never seen anything like it and neither had Pluto, which shows in the writing of the book. This book illustrates that no one in Northeast Ohio, no matter their stature in the sporting world could have expected, or dreamed, what transpired on the diamond that year.

Book Grade: 3.75/5

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If you haven’t already heard, Francisco Liriano appears to be back to his old self. After putting up a 0.80 ERA in just under 50 innings of work in the Domincan Winter League, Liriano has impressed scouts to no end. He struck out over eleven batters per nine innings, while walking a total of five. You would be hard-pressed to find a scout that doesn’t believe Liriano is a prime candidate for a breakout season in 2010.

Although I don’t claim to be anything close to an expert, I compiled three pitches from Liriano from throughout his short career. The first one is from July 4 of 2009, against the Detroit Tigers. The second one is a bullpen pitch from Spring Training in 2008, and the third one is from last night, in the final game of the Dominican Winter League.

(Video courtesy of espn360.com, twinsbaseball.com, and an amateur clip picked up off YouTube)

(As you can tell by the video, this is an amateur attempt in every sense of the word. I simply captured these three clips, slowed them down a little, and uploaded them via the ever-helpful Photobucket. The frame counts I reference later were counted by slowing the videos down much more, but those versions weren’t uploaded. Also, this is a .wmv format. The “real” scouts combine dozens of stills into a .gif. The “analysis” that follows is very much from an untrained eye, and should obviously be taken with a grain of salt. If you have some expertise to add, please leave it in the comments or shoot me an email!)

By slowing down the most recent video further, I counted a total of 26 frames from the balance point — right before the knee begins to fall — to the release of the ball. This was the same in the July 4, 2009 game. According to the Baseball Think Factory, Liriano boasted an incredibly quick 22-frame delivery in 2006, when he was obviously at his best. From what I’ve learned, a faster delivery is better because of the increased momentum a pitcher can utilize as he releases the ball.

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Other than this tempo discrepancy, most of Liriano’s delivery remains the same (again, according to my very untrained eye). The number of frames from when Liriano lifts his left arm to the release of the ball has remained consistent (11 or 12 frames), his elbow leads his arm and is seen at a horizontal angle, his knees bend and his rump moves to the right (”sitting down,” as some scouts call it), and his right arm has remained firm throughout the years.

Liriano lives and dies by his slider. In 2006, he was pitching quick and was throwing his slider as fast as he could, which gave him a slider 23 runs above average. After his injury that year, though, the Twins tried to slow him down and extend his delivery to better protect against injury risk. As a result of this, Liriano’s slider was not as dominant as before (single-digit value), and his confidence took a free-fall.

This is baseball ethics at their finest. Should a pitching coach allow his pitcher to throw an extremely effective pitch that puts him at an injury risk (which could be relatively insignificant for Liriano after his surgery), or should he protect his pitcher, no matter the cost? In Liriano’s case, not being allowed to throw the way he did in 2006 could spell an end to his career — in Minnesota, at least.

Liriano has one of the highest potentials of any pitcher currently on the 40-man roster. Having his future decided by whether or not pitching coach Rick Anderson and manager Ron Gardenhire allow him to throw hard is disconcerting, to say the least.

But watching him throw his slider without holding back during the Dominican Winter League was extremely enjoyable. If he doesn’t succeed with the Twins, I wish him the best of luck with another organization.

What do you think? Will the Twins allow Liriano to throw the way he did in 2006, or will they slow him down again in 2010? What is your statistical projection for Liriano in 2010? Be sure to let us know in the comment section!

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If you are anything like me, you wonder what catchers have to go through in the offseason to prepare for a season of 162 games. Well here’s a video showing us a typical day in Red Sox captain and part time catcher (I am having problems calling him a back up after all of these years, but it had to happen sooner or later) Jason Varitek. The video shows Tek in his natural habitat, his home down in Georgia.

So without further ado, from Boston’s own cable channel NESN (New England Sports Network), here’s the video…

For those of you who complain about Tek’s arm and his inability to throw base stealers out at a consistently enough, did you pick up on the fact that he now needs to start throwing more since he broke his elbow. Yup, that’s right, remember that one year when he was on the DL for most of the second half of the season after making that diving catch by the on deck circle? It’s all coming back to me now, that’s right, that awesome catch broke his elbow (and he still hung onto the ball if I remember correctly)!

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OK, be honest with me now, how many of you had t go back to the video to hear him say that again?

As always, we’d love to hear your comments about what you think of this video.

Stay tuned, because next week we’ll have a video on another Red Sox player during his offseason workout!

Brewers LF Ryan Braun Photo by Icon SMI

These weekly posts of mine have been based on a rotisserie format using a traditional 5×5 scoring system to keep things simple.

Personally I prefer more statistics in my leagues (which is why I was the commissioner in one of my leagues), but in order to reach the most readers we will just stick with the basic. But, feel free to either e-mail me or leave a comment in this post if you have specific questions. If I don’t reply to the comment, then ping me in an e-mail, too!

We will go around the horn in this series after skipping the pitcher’s position.

And remember, just because a player had a good fantasy season in 2009, it doesn’t mean he will have another one in 2010 and beyond. Sometimes you need to look into the player’s past and see if he is showing signs of decline over a few years.

Please Note: The 5×5 stats listed below are as follows in this order Runs/HR/RBI/SB/Ave and the number in parenthesis is the player’s age

10 — Carlos Lee (33) Astros

65/26/102/5/.300

To be honest, I’m not a big Carlos Lee fan, but he is consistent. He is also consistently injured about once a year or it t least seems that way. If you need 20-30 HR and 100+ RBI than Lee is your guy.

9 — Jason Kubel (27) Twins; Also qualifies at DH and RF

73/28/103/1/.300

If we can expect Kubel to hit like this on a regular basis then he becomes as valuable as he is versatile. Another 25+ HR with 100+ RBI

8 — Denard Span (25) Twins; Also qualifies at CF and RF

97/8/68/23/.311

This leadoff hitter won’t hit for power like Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson or steal as many bases but every fantasy team needs a 90+ runs, 20+ steals guy who can hit .300. You gotta like that he can play all three OF positions, too.

7 — Johnny Damon (35) Yankees

107/24/82/12/.282

I think this is what you get out of a motivated player who can withstand the heat in a contract year, but don’t count on it every year except for the 100 runs scored and the .282 average.

6 — Shin-Soo Choo (26) Indians; Also qualifies at RF

87/20/86/21/.300

I honestly don’t know much about Choo, but to be able to put up numbers like these on a team that was as bad as the 2009 Indians is very impressive.

5 — Jason Bay (30) Red Sox

103/36/119/13/.267

Bay’s average keeps him behind players like Lind, Holliday and Braun and is due to his annual slump that he always finds himself in. These slumps seem to last about a month, but when he’s on, he’s on fire!

4 — Carl Crawford (27) Rays

96/15/68/60/.305

Crawford ranks so high here based upon his 60 steals, 96 runs scored and his .305 avaerage with a little touch of pop (15 HR).

3 — Adam Lind (25) Blue Jays; Also qualifies at DH

93/35/114/1/.305

The number one guy when looking at just the DH position had a great year and should put up similar numbers for the next few years barring injuries. I am not surprised at all at these numbers from Lind, but I am a little surprised at how fast he was able to produce this way.

2 — Matt Holliday (29) A’s and Cardinals

94/24/109/14/.320

If he played the whole season in St. Louis he may have scored 100 runs, hit 30 HR and maybe reached 120 RBI with an even better average than the .320 he ended up with. Oakland was not very good to Holliday, but Braun would have beat him out on stolen bases in the end.

1 — Ryan Braun (25) Brewers

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113/32/114/20/.320

Moving Braun to the OF from 3B was probably the best move the Brewers have made in some time as struggling in the field might have robbed Ryan from his concentration at the plate. He will be a force to be reckoned with at the plate for years to come.

Honorable Mentions:

Raul Ibanez (37) Phillies

93/34/93/4/.272

Adam Dunn (29) Nationals; Also qualifies at 1B and RF

81/38/105/0/.267

While for a lot of teams, the offseason is a quiet time, a time for

It would have been hard to believe after the final out of the NLDS that anything would overshadow the pursuit of Matt Holliday during the winter. After all, St. Louis had mortgaged their future, to some extent, to bring him into the fold. Holliday promised to be one of the top free agents on the market and one that would draw a lot of attention from around baseball.

However, the Holliday pursuit was moved to the back burner with the November announcement that Mark McGwire would be returning to baseball as the Cardinals’ hitting coach. McGwire, who had been out of baseball since the end of the 2001 season and had kept a low profile since his disastrous 2005 testimony before Congress, was not present at the announcement of his hiring, but the team promised he would be available to the press at some time.

That time was January, as McGwire met the media and admitted what had long been suspected, that he used steroids during his playing career, including his record-setting 1998 campaign. McGwire made the rounds with his apology and admittance, but his stance that steroids didn’t help him hit home runs undercut any good will that had been generated by his coming forth.  An incomprehensible press conference at the team’s Winter Warm-Up, where the press was herded into a crowded hallway and only allowed a few minutes with McGwire, didn’t help in the war of public relations either.

The Holliday situation came to a head before McGwire’s admission.  Just as reports had the Cards setting a firm deadline and preparing to walk away, the two sides came together and hammered out a seven-year, $120 million contract.  While the total numbers weren’t exactly in the range where Scott Boras expected them to be, it still is the most expensive contract ever handed out by St. Louis.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

That distinction is expected to last until the Cardinals come to terms with first baseman Albert Pujols.  This offseason, there was a lot of talk about extending Pujols’s deal, which expires (after a team option) at the end of the ’11 season.  Pujols has said that he won’t have negotiations during the season, leaving the team a short window to do anything before the ’10 season kicks off.

While the team has expressed strong interest in getting the job done, Pujols’s comments have been at least interpreted in various ways.  While he has said that he’s prepared to become a free agent, he’s also said that he’d consider a discount to stay.  He’s indicated there is no rush to get him signed, preferring the team focus on their pursuit of Holliday.  Now that he’s in the fold, that focus has changed.

The contract status of Pujols will be one of the major topics during the coming season.  He may not want to discuss it, but the rest of us will.

The Cardinals also worked on their pitching staff during the winter, signing Brad Penny to a one-year deal and bringing in former Cub Rich Hill as a non-roster invitee to spring training. As it stands now, this is the look of the Cardinals going into the spring (at least from this writer’s viewpoint).

2B Skip Schumaker
SS Brendan Ryan
1B Albert Pujols
LF Matt Holliday
RF Ryan Ludwick
CF Colby Rasmus
C Yadier Molina
3B David Freese

Bench: C Jason LaRue, INF Julio Lugo, rest TBD

SP Chris Carpenter
SP Adam Wainwright
SP Kyle Lohse
SP Brad Penny
SP Rich Hill/Jaime Garcia/Mitchell Boggs

RP Kyle McClellan
RP Blake Hawksworth
RP Ben Jakish (Rule V from Reds)
RP Jason Motte
RP Dennys Reyes
RP Trever Miller

CP Ryan Franklin

The bench will likely be a focus of GM John Mozeliak’s in the days leading up to and even into spring training.  However, the Cardinals have a strong core for 2010.

As some of you have noticed, we have joined the Amazon affiliate program some time ago. What you may not know is what’s available through Baseball Reflections.com so this post is here to tell you just that!

For starters, you can view and purchase from our aStores which is where you can find pages upon pages of books and movies on baseball (documentaries, biographies, etc.) as well as baseball gear and apparel. This aStores can be found above our logo on the right or at the links in this post.

Over on the right sidebar you will find a carousel of my top 10 picks of baseball books. Across the page from that on the left sidebar you will find a carousel of Alyssa Milano’s MLB Touch line of clothing. If you scroll down from there on the left you will find two more carousels. The first are my top 10 picks from the up and coming Akadema brand of gloves, bats and more followed by a list of some of my favorite baseball movies further down that left sidebar.

The Indians started the off season by firing their manager and his coaches, but keeping most of the other front office personnel in place. They staged some what of an extensive manager search and ended on former Washington Nationals’ skipper Manny Acta.

There was a big deal made in Cleveland about bringing Bobby Valentine in for an interview as well as some discussion about Indian legend Mike Hargrove coming back to coach the Tribe. As it turned out, the Indians didn’t want to pay the money it would take to pry Valentine from Japan and Hargrove probably didn’t want to come back to a team that is continually trading away their best players.

Another name in the discussion was former Tribe third baseman Travis Fryman, who currently coaches one of the team’s Minor League clubs. His interview seemed more as a courtesy from the Tribe then a feeling of genuine interest.

So, Acta is now in charge of the ball club on Lake Erie. Many have questioned why Mark Shapiro picked Acta, who got fired from one of the only teams that have been worse than the Indians in the past few years. Speculation has it that Shapiro wanted someone who wouldn’t question his moves, which seem to be primarily decided by ownership, and who would be willing to coach whatever players were there at not a very high price.

Former Indian C Sandy Alomar Jr.

One of the traditions in Northeast Ohio is for fans to want to bring back anyone and everyone who had a hand in the Central Division winning teams in the 1990s. Well, they got their wish this off season as Sandy Alomar Jr. was signed on as a coach. This hire may have received more press action and comments in the area then the hiring of Acta did. In retrospect, this was by far the best pickup the Tribe made all off season.

Following in line with moves that should be a trade mark of the Indians, Shapiro traded away a few more starters for some players to be named later and continually insists that the Tribe is headed in the right direction. There have not been any free agency acquisitions to publicize; in fact, the Tribe has virtually done everything possible to stay out of the news since ending the regular season.

There was some excitement around the Hall of Fame voting when former Indian Roberto Alomar was believed to be a lock to get in, possible wearing an Indians hat. Unfortunately, Tribe fans couldn’t even console in that good news as Alomar came up just short, and will have to try again next year.

With Spring Training just around the corner, the Indians are starting to try to find a way to possibly get some people inside of the park, but seriously, how many Grady Sizemore promotions can one team have? The Indians were at the bottom of the league in attendance last year, and things don’t look to be getting any better.

Because I was such good friends with Rich (Ashburn: broadcast partner of Hall of Famer Harry Kalas), I pretty much had carte blanche to go visit him and Harry Kalas and Chris “Wheels” Wheeler in the announcers’ booth both down at Jack Russell in Clearwater – that was before Brighthouse Field – and at the old Veterans’ Stadium in Philadelphia, anytime I wanted to. Down in Florida, my aunt Pat and I would hang with them, Rich puffing away on his pipe while he described the action and bantered back and forth with his partners. His was the only kind of tobacco smell I’ve ever been able to stand, and I actually liked the kind he smoked. Back in the mid-nineteen eighties and early nineties I used to umpire a lot of the Phillies Phantasy camps in Clearwater, which has been my winter residence since 1983; that’s how I got to know all of them. The rules about fraternization among umpires and club personnel are a lot more relaxed in that kind of setting, and Rich really kind of adopted me and was so kind and dear to me all the rest of his life. He wrote this wry little piece about me for his newspaper column one time, and always looked after me like a doting uncle would. Anytime I or aunt Pat wanted tickets to a game anywhere, they were ours. Rich got me a gig singing and playing the National Anthem at the Vet in 1987, I think, and I still have a photo somewhere of me standing there at home plate, my favorite umpiring crew of Eddie Montague, Dutch Rennert, Lee Weyer, and maybe Randy Marsh or someone nearby, standing at attention with their backs to me as I’m strumming my guitar and wailing away. If I can dig it up, I’ll e mail you a copy. It was a very special occasion for me, and I had Rich to thank for it; as I got more into umpiring, the less priority my previous ten-year semi-career as a singer/songwriter/guitar player took, so I was winding down my performing days at that point. I actually had a real job back then, working near Carnegie Hall in the management and booking offices of the company that handled Gladys Knight and the Pips and B.B. King.

Rich was just a warm, earthy, authentic guy, and I’m lucky he came to be fond of me. I never got tired of asking him about Cal Abrams and that play – Rich never thought his throw was all that spectacular, as he was playing shallow, but it certainly was memorable! – and got to know other Whiz Kids like Granny Hamner and the lovely Andy Seminick, as bowlegged as they come but a cheerful and dependable catcher for that amazing team of my pre-youth. I’m 56 years old, born in May of 1953, the second of identical twins, and came upon my love for baseball by reading about it as if it were a subject you study in school but really, really love doing the homework for. I originally wanted to be able to beat a friend of mine at baseball trivia , that was my sole motivation for buying a few books about it in April of 1979 and suddenly discovering its archive of extraordinary and riveting literature, filled with the marvelous exploits of Christy Mathewson, my all-time favorite player, and the New York Giants of Matty, Fred Merkle, John McGraw, Roger Bresnahan, Chief Bender, peripheral characters like Charles Victory Faust, and of course, the umpires. In May of 1981 I read a book titled the Men in Blue: Conversations With Umpires by Professor Larry Gerlach, and it changed my life. A year later, my mother convinced me to don one of those old balloon-style protectors and start umpiring little league out in southern California where she was living by then, so for some crazy reason I did, and was an abject failure at it my first game – so inept that people wrote letters to the local paper raging about how terrible I was, couldn’t tell a fair ball from a foul, and let a game for ten-year-olds turn into a three-and-a-half hour nightmare, all of which was true, but I was not so much stung by the vituperation as I was spurred by it, challenged, and somehow spiritually enlightened by it all. I went to Harry Wendelstedt’s umpire school in Daytona Beach, Florida the next January of 1982, and never looked back. Working those Phillies camps was so much fun; I had read all about those guys before meeting them, and it was as exciting for me to be around them as it was for any other fan. I miss those days, and Rich and all those guys no longer with us, Kalas, Hamner, Seminick, and my wonderful pal and instructor, Lee Weyer. When I was severely injured in a car accident out in Los Angeles right after I got out of umpire school in 1982, Lee came to visit me in the hospital every single day. He’d sit at the foot of my bed doing magic tricks for all the nurses, hopelessly enchanting them, and me too. He, like Rich, died of a massive heart attack, Lee in July of 1988 and Rich in 1997 while he was here in New York.

To me, being a Harry Kalas fan, that was almost as good as the interview itself!

Perry, I’d like to thank you once again for agreeing to do this interview. Please feel free to visit the site & share your thoughts on baseball with us! Your voice is always welcome on the pages of Baseball Reflections.

Umpire/Musician Perry Lee Barber

Here’s a direct linked summary of Ms. Barber right from her personal LinkedIn profile:

Twenty-nine seasons of umpiring all levels of baseball both professional and amateur, including major league spring training and Division I college baseball, with international umpiring experience in Japan and Taiwan and four years of umpiring and scheduling umpires for the independent Atlantic League; taught umpiring to public school students in the Bronx as part of an accredited program (”Sports Officiating Studies,” or “SOS”) funded by the New York City Department of Education; musician and songwriter, formerly a solo performer who opened shows for Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Hall & Oates, and others; published author of dozens of articles and profiles of other sports officials for “Referee Magazine”; internet blogger (”Dishing It… and Taking It Too.”).

So with her own words as an introduction, here is my interview with mucician/umpire, Perry Lee Barber…