Maybe A-Rod's next team could be the Toledo Mud Hens

I love the following from the Det. Free press!


Maybe A-Rod's next team could be the Toledo Mud Hens

October 31, 2007
By JON PAUL MOROSI

FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER

Alex Rodriguez isn’t going to be a Tiger in 2008, but maybe he’ll consider an offer from the Toledo Mud Hens.

On Sunday, after SI.com reported that Rodriguez would opt out of his contract and become a free agent, New York Yankees senior vice president Hank Steinbrenner told the New York Times, “Does he want to go into the Hall of Fame as a Yankee, or a Toledo Mud Hen?”

The Mud Hens figured they should give him that opportunity.

Dan Royer, a graphic designer for the team, created a mock Hall of Fame bust, with Rodriguez wearing a Toledo hat.

The Mud Hens also prepared a letter that they plan to mail to Rodriguez’s
agent, Scott Boras. Included is a contract offer with incentives if he hits 75 home runs per season and leads Toledo to 10 straight Governors’ Cup titles.

There is a catch, of course.

The letter includes a reminder that Mike Hessman – the International League’s reigning Most Valuable Player – is the Mud Hens’ everyday third baseman.

“We think that it would be a healthy competition at spring training between
the two of them,” it reads. “Would your client be willing to play a different position?”

Haha, great post. Thanks!

I would love to see A-Rod with the Mud Hens cap!
I guess he will have to do some workout soon if there is a competition with Hessman.

Ha ha. A-Rod a MudHen. Ha ha.

That's great!

GO MUD HENS

Mud Hens will win the IL for sure with Arod!

it made national radio!!!

Now everybody will want to be a Mudhen!!

tigersaint wrote:

Now everybody will want to be a Mudhen!!

We're Mudhens!

Toledo, Here He Comes?

By DAN ROSENHECK
Published: November 25, 2007

It is hardly typical of the agent Scott Boras to accept a below-market contract offer. But if Alex Rodriguez, Boras’s marquee client, hammers out the 10-year, $275 million deal he is negotiating with the Yankees, he may be leaving money on the table. Although no other major league team made a formal offer to Rodriguez, he did receive one proposal for $35 million a season from an unlikely suitor: the Toledo Mud Hens, the Class AAA affiliate of the Detroit Tigers.

The Mud Hens were inspired to court Rodriguez after Hank Steinbrenner, son of the Yankees’ principal owner, said to The New York Times, “Does he want to go into the Hall of Fame as a Yankee or a Toledo Mud Hen?”

Toledo promptly offered the 10-year, $350 million contract Boras said he was seeking, with some daunting conditions. Rodriguez would have to hit over .350 with at least 75 home runs, and lead the team to an International League title every year of the contract, as well as collect more than 1,500 runs batted in over its course.

It is not too late for Rodriguez to reconsider Toledo’s offer. Could he meet the Mud Hens’ requirements?

Rodriguez’s production with Toledo can be estimated using a series of formulas known as Minor League Equivalencies. By studying the effect that promotion to the big leagues has had on component statistics like doubles and strikeouts for the thousands of players who have gone to the majors from the minors, analysts have developed equations to translate statistics between competition levels. And although the formulas are typically used to evaluate minor league prospects, they are equally reliable when applied in reverse.

The most popular Minor League Equivalency system, designed by Clay Davenport of Baseball Prospectus, estimates that the weaker competition at Class AAA should increase a major leaguer’s home runs by about a third. But home runs in general are 25 percent less common in the Mud Hens’ International League than they are in the American League.

Moreover, Toledo plays in a pitchers’ park, which suppresses home runs by more than 10 percent. And the Mud Hens’ season is 143 games, compared with 162 in the majors. With this model, Rodriguez’s .314 batting average and 54 home runs with the Yankees translates to .326 and 50 with Toledo.

So if not with Toledo, where could Rodriguez hit 75 homers? Dan Szymborski of the Web site baseballthinkfactory.com said Rodriguez would have to dip to Class A.

The most homer-friendly environment at that level can be found in a patch of scrubland in the Mojave Desert, about 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles at 3,000 feet above sea level. The High Desert Mavericks, the Seattle Mariners’ farm club in the California League, play there in a 3,800-seat stadium. If Rodriguez could repeat his 2007 performance for the Mavericks, Davenport found that he would hit 75 home runs while batting .401 with 207 R.B.I.

There is probably only one place in professional baseball where Rodriguez could blow past 75 home runs with room to spare — it simply does not happen to be on this side of the Pacific Ocean.

The prize bandbox in the game can be found in a corner of Tokyo: Meiji Jingu Kyujo, home of the Yakult Swallows. It measures not even 300 feet down the lines, and about 340 feet to the power alleys.

Numerous Yakult alumni have played in the majors and seen their home runs evaporate: Akinori Iwamura, who averaged 38 in his last two seasons with Yakult, hit 7 for Tampa Bay this year. Even a slumping Rodriguez would give the fans their money’s worth at Meiji Jingu Kyujo. Davenport estimated he would hit 94 home runs for the Swallows.

There is, however, one thing Minor League Equivalencies do not account for: the responses of opposing managers. In 2001, Barry Bonds set the major league single-season record with 73 home runs. In the succeeding three years, he hit no more than 46, largely because other teams stopped pitching to him. He drew 120 intentional walks in 2004 alone.

In Greek mythology, the gods punished Tantalus for his misdeeds by hanging over his head a tree whose fruit receded out of reach every time he sought to grab it. Seventy-five home runs, at any level, may prove to be the baseball equivalent of Tantalus’s fruit: the closer one gets to it, the farther opposing pitchers can pull it away.