I'm sure many of you have seen Rob Neyer's lukewarm assessment of John Wasdin on ESPNet ("It appears he'll fight Chris Hammond for the fifth spot in the rotation, which is a lose-lose proposition for Red Sox fans"), but you don't have to look far to find more encouraging signs. Take, for instance, STATS Inc.'s 1995 Minor League Scouting Notebook by Eddie Epstein:
So far, Wasdin has pitched like the first-round pick he was in 1993 . . . his career K/BB ratio is an excellent 189/47 in 233 full-season innings . . . a three-pitch pitcher (fastball, slider, change) who obviously has good command and control.
Then go to STATS' 1996 Minor League Scouting Notebook, which was written this time by John Sickels:
Wasdin is very intelligent, works hard, and doesn't back down from a challenge. He was a big-game pitcher in college, and his reputation for pitching well under pressure has followed him into the pros. He should be a fine major-league starter, though he doesn't have the dominant stuff of a staff ace.
And, finally, check out STATS' The Scouting Notebook: 1996 for the Wasdin comment, written by Baseball Weekly's Peter Pascarelli:
Has pitched like a polished product throughout his pro career . . . continued to issue walks at a very low rate, fewer than two per nine innings . . . . doesn't record strikeouts at high rates (but) does throw three pitches for strikes, and wasn't overmatched in his brief major-league trial (in 1995).
The picture that's emerging is that of a disciplined finesse pitcher who doesn't walk many hitters. He doesn't throw hard -- highest estimate in these books was 89 -- and gives up his share of hits, but pitchers like this have succeeded at the major-league level before. (Bob Tewksbury, who throws much softer than 89, leaps to mind.) That, coupled with the glowing recommendation we all read in the Globe from Oakland pitching coach Bob Cluck, gives us reason to hope . . . far more than Neyer's pessimism gives us reason to despair.
Beyond any of this, though, is a strong conviction that moves like these are moves in the right direction, a direction best articulated by Mark Lecesse in an e-mail he sent two days ago:
I'm liking the trend here. The Sox rid themselves of high-salaried country clubbers (Greenwell, Clemens) and malcontents who don't take their work seriously (Canseco) and have been stockpiling under-30 players and prospects. Add in the vets -- this is Naehring's and Vaughn's team now, they're the leaders -- and it looks as if it could be a good mix, maybe not in '97, but in the next few years. They've got a lot of arms, so they can pick and choose the live ones. They've got a lot of bats, and now they can DH Jefferson and Stanley. They're even adding some speed, with Mack. Ah, the dreams of January . . .
But what's so dreamy about it? And why not '97? I'm not saying they're going to win, but where, exactly, is this team overwhelmingly weak? Starting pitching, perhaps, but -- as Mark says -- there are a lot of arms here; if Joe Kerrigan is as good as advertised, he should be able to sift through the pile and find five they can count on. (And don't forget Bret Saberhagen, who has always pitched well when healthy.) The closer, maybe, but Heathcliff Slocumb pitched very well down the stretch last year. Defense, certainly, but now that Canseco's gone that opens up the DH option for Wil Cordero as well; any permutation that doesn't include Cordero at second base means the infield should be fairly solid. If you can see more glaring weaknesses than that, you have better eyes than me. I believe, firmly, that I have far more reason to think they're going to be good than anyone else has to think they're going to be bad. How good is another question, but last year 85 wins had them in the wild-card race until the last four days of the season; can anyone honestly say this team isn't capable of winning 85 games?
One last note on Canseco:
Most of the Boston TV stations, preoccupied as they are with Super Bowl post-mortems and the beginning of the Tuna Watch, treated the Canseco trade as an afterthought, but one of the ones with a 10 o'clock newscast -- Channel 56, I guess it was -- figured out the Red Sox' record with Canseco in the lineup and without him in the lineup over the last two years. It caught me by surprise so I didn't have a chance to grab a pen and copy down the numbers, but I remember the winning percentages exactly: .554 with him, .556 without him. (The breakdown was something like 190 games with him and 110 without him, which is about right since the 1995 season was truncated by 20 games because of the strike.) And this is confirmed by our own anecdotal analyses, which is centered around two irrefutable facts: Jose was out of the lineup for almost the entire white-hot start of '95 that put the Sox in position to win the A.L. East, and he was out for most of last year's dynamic stretch run that nearly landed them in the playoffs. So if you're wondering how much overall strength they'll lose without the big guy, the answer appears to be "not much". I'm pretty surprised about that -- when he went down last year, my comment was "How can the Sox not miss that cannon firing out of the No. 4 hole?" -- but facts are facts. And I guess it goes to prove just how good a hitter Reggie Jefferson, whose at-bats have been going to Canseco these last two years, actually is.
They still have Jefferson. And now they have John Wasdin, too. You can make a strong case that they're better off.
