A Reason To Believe
Statistics, like scouting, never by themselves tell the whole story about a baseball player’s season, career, or start. In most cases, combining the two will tell us everything we want to know, but every once in awhile a situation pops up where a player’s performance can’t be explained by either method. The baseball term for such a performance is “fluke” or “outlier,” but I’ve learned that not every case should just be tossed into those categories.
Kansas City Royals left-handed pitcher Brian Anderson was a prime example of this last season. It almost became cliched for a Royals player to have the worst season of his life in 2004, because everything that could’ve gone wrong did go wrong in Kansas City. After a rousing come-from-behind win over the White Sox on Opening Day, things quickly turned bad. Angel Berroa stunk worse than an Easter egg on the Fourth of July. Current New York darling Carlos Beltran was traded for prospects in late June. Utilityman Desi Relaford saw regular duty in the outfield. And Anderson – the team’s Opening Day starter – surrendered five earned runs in five innings that day, beginning a bizarrely horrible season. Horrible because he turned every batter he faced into a .320/.364/.545 all-star, and bizarre because he, at 31 years of age and ten seasons of league-average pitching, suddenly lost his ability to get people out.
The Royals tried everything to decipher just what was wrong with their $6 million investment. They encouraged him, let him continue to start games, demoted him to the bullpen, fired the pitching coach, and messed with his mechanics. Aside from the law of averages eventually helping Anderson out with a solid month of September, absolutely nothing worked. No matter what the Royals did to help him, Brian kept having disastrous starts on a regular basis. It became pretty clear that either A) 2004 was a random, fluky season or B) He had Steve Blass Disease Lite.
Through it all, Anderson – unlike ex-teammate Darrell May – took full responsibility for his actions after every single start. He made sure the world knew that he stunk, sucked, let his teammates down, let himself down, and was just plain lousy with a consistency that would make Paul O’Neill jealous. Doing so deflected a lot of the criticism he would’ve received on top of what he was already getting from fans, and also probably earned the respect of many. It can’t be easy to man up and point the finger at yourself every fifth day, putting the blame on you and only you.
And then almost five months after the season ended, this article showed up on kcroyals.com, and pretty much everything was explained. This was no fluke or aberration, at least in the way we usually think of the words. The article, penned by Dick Kaegel, read in part:
Royals left-hander Brian Anderson lost his pitching effectiveness last season. Even worse, for a time, he feared he might lose his wife, Anna.Well, that certainly explains a lot. I think I’d have a hard time thinking about pitching too if my wife was in critical condition in a hospital. To make matters worse, she was pregnant with their first child, and nobody was sure if the baby would make it if Anna passed away. Thankfully, they didn’t have to face such a situation; Anna’s now fully recovered and gave birth to a baby girl on February 7. Still, it’s amazing that Brian never said a word of this to the public, because people – especially Midwesterners – wouldn’t have had any problem with him taking a leave of absence from the team to care for his wife. In fact, had Royals fans known about it, they probably would’ve pushed him out the clubhouse door if they could have. But to his credit, Anderson kept pitching, kept trying, and kept taking responsibility for knocking his team out of games early. The article continued:
Anna Anderson became seriously ill last May, following a surgical procedure, and she was hospitalized just in time.
She might have died.
"The doctor said, 'If you didn't get in here when you did, it could have happened. It could have gone that far if you'd have messed around and tried to ride this out at
home for another day or so,'" her husband said.
It was an unsettling time but Anderson refuses to link the off-field circumstances with his on-field failures.While it’s true that he was “bad for a lot of reasons,” like poor location and movement, it’s also true that this outside circumstance didn’t help matters any whether he wants to admit it or not.
"Even mentioning it now is a little bit uneasy because even in telling the story, it could be misconstrued as, well, he's throwing out excuses now," he said.
"That's not the case. I was bad. I was bad for a lot of reasons and if my wife was in perfect health and everything was going completely smoothly, I still would have been bad."
Royals fans are looking for reasons to believe that something good will come of the 2005 season, which is likely to be a long one. I've found my reason in Anderson and his never-give-up attitude, incredible accountability, and the likelihood that he'll perform like the BA of old in 2005. The starting rotation may be short on talent, but with Anderson as a part of it, they won’t be short on inspiration. And sometimes, being inspired can cause ordinary people to do great things. Great things that can’t be explained with statistics or scouting.
Matt Diaz Update
If the Royals want to add Matt Diaz to their outfield mix, now is their chance. He became free to sign with any team after refusing to play for the Orioles, who claimed him off release waivers. I still think he’d be a worthwhile pickup on a minor-league contract.