KNIGHTS BLOCK 1 ROUNDUP: IT SURE GOT LATE EARLY

NEW YORK – As Lawrence Peter Berra famously stated in 1957:

"It gets late early out there"

Yogi may have been talking about the early approach of shadows in left field at old Yankee Stadium during day games, but he may as well have been talking about the 2008 Knights.

It sure has gotten late early for Knights fans. In fact, it’s no stretch to believe that the season is already over. Yes, Virginia, it’s that bad.

The numbers, as they say, don’t lie. The Knights blundered and bumbled their way to a 13-33 Block 1 record, the worst start in franchise history. They have already allowed 95 more runs than they’ve scored. Their .242 team batting average is dead last in the NASBL. And incredible as it may seem, the team didn’t even play as well as even these numbers would suggest. One Knights beat reporter described the job of covering the Knights as “excruciating.” Fortunately for the Knights, the LF Central appears to be a .500 division again, thus putting the team only 10 ½ games out at this point. But no one should be fooled – this is a really bad team with no shot at contention in 2008.

This page predicted following the 2008 draft that the Knights would have a difficult time repeating the success of the 2007 season because the loss of offensive firepower either through roster cutdowns or key players not being able to repeat what probably were career seasons. And since the club did not make any adjustments to the leaky starting rotation for 2008, it was a virtual guarantee that the Knights would not win 87 games again. But even we could not predict that some of the Knights players would perform so dismally in Block 1.

Some samples of the level of putridity the Knights displayed in Block 1? Hide the women and children, folks, it ain’t pretty.

CF Grady Sizemore, a former #1 pick, is batting .167 with a nearly-unfathomable .480 OPS. .480! Oh, yes, and only two stolen basis in five tries.

LF Hideki Matsui, a .370 hitter in 2007 and .311 hitter in 2005 with 47 homers, produced a .221 average and .679 OPS in Block 1.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia, the club’s prized catching pick in the draft, hit a robust .193 with 39 strikeouts and just two walks. His OPS? .496. Time to reach for the backups, right? Well, not much help there; Aging veteran Mike Piazza is hitting .139 with one home run and Johnny Estrada is at .182 with one RBI.

And lest we forget – Barry Zito, whose career has taken a bigger nosedive than New York’s ex-Governor Elliot Spitzer, produced one of the worst Block 1 performances in the history of the league: an 0-8 record, a 9.96 ERA, a 2.21 WHP and an average against of – drum roll please! - .351! (At least Spitzer got some high-end nookie before imploding.)

In fairness, however, it should be noted that Zito’s average against is not even the worst on the team – that honor belongs to reliever Eric Gagne, who coughed up a .363 average against. Pitching machines have better stuff than that.

So what happened? How did this club go from promising to vomit-inducing in a matter of months?

Start with the club’s offseason plan. Knights GM Mitch Pak, in keeping with his master plan of building through the draft and staying away from the trade market for the most part, announced after last season that the club would be looking to address its most glaring needs in the draft – right field, catcher and the bullpen. That meant the team would not upgrade its starting rotation in any meaningful way and also would continue its “station to station baseball” strategy that de-emphasized the “big bat” in favor of high on-base percentages and speed. This was a defensible strategy, since the team had improved markedly since embracing this strategy for the 2006 season. However, it relied heavily on the team’s younger players approximating the seasons they had in 2007 and the veteran add-ons to supply punch as well. It was a high-risk gamble, and one that Pak seems to have lost big-time.

As a result of this plan, Pak bypassed high-powered, high-profile (and high-strikeout-prone) Ryan Braun in favor of Matt Kemp in the first round of the draft. In truth, Braun would have been a sexy choice, but it would have represented a philosophical step backwards for the Knights, since Braun would have been compared with Jim Thome, who was the team's big bat before 2006.

Ultimately even Braun's bat would not have made that much of a difference. Simply put, it would have been impossible for the Knights to approach their 2007 run production even with Braun on the team. As we noted in February, too many other players had fluky, career years in 2007 that will never be repeated. Indeed, Billy Hall will be fortunate to hit another 49 homers in his entire NASBL career, to say nothing about hitting 49 in a season ever again (the same goes for his 134 RBI); Jacque Jones, who hit 24 homers last year and hit .292, doesn’t even have a job this season. Neither does super-sub Olmedo Saenz (.359 in 143 AB's in '07).

Except for Saltalamacchia, who is just 22 and still a good prospect, the areas that Pak concentrated on have improved. Other than Chad Qualls and Gagne, who is little more than a reclamation project anyway, the bullpen has been very effective. 2007 LF ROY Takashi Saito is second in the LF in saves with 9 and has a 1.72 ERA; new comers Manny Delcarmen (3.10 ERA, 19 K’s) and Justin Miller (3.12 ERA) have turned in satisfying performances; and Knights vets Kevin Gregg (2.25 ERA) and Scott Linebrink (3.57 ERA) have held up their ends well. Matt Kemp, in limited play, has impressed and is on target to become the Knights everyday RF in 2009.

As for the rest of the lineup, the Knights have to believe that Grady Sizemore will not hit .167 for the season. If he does, the Knights will be lucky to win 50 games. Mitch Pak is hoping for Sizemore to undergo the same transformation that Garrett Atkins (no bargain himself this year at .243) underwent in 2007, when he had a brutal Block 1 but recovered to make the All-Star team and finish the year with over 100 RBIs. The same could be said about Matsui, who swung a lethal bat in 2007 and is only a couple of years removed from a 47 homer season.

But last year's starting pitching, which reminded exactly nobody of the 1971 Baltimore Orioles, became markedly worse in Block 1, contributing mightily to the Knights woes. Start with the poster child for futility, Mr. Zito. To say that New York has not been kind to Zito is a gross understatement. He came to New York in a surprise deal that was widely praised by GMs throughout the league – a young lefty with a sparkling 59-24, 4.71 ERA career record and two 20-win seasons under his belt. Since donning the Knights uniform, though, Zito has plunged to 26-47 with a 6.19 ERA. His winless Block 1 is especially galling to Knights fans and brass as well, who surrendered a #1 pick and promsing closer Joe Nathan to get him. Nathan has been an All-Star every year since that trade, while Zito has been brutal. His trade value, even if he was on the block, is a fraction of what it once was. Knights insiders believe that Zito is so radioactive on the trade market, the club would be better off holding on to him to see if he ever recovers a semblance of his pre-New York form.

Last year’s staff ace, 15-game winner Matt Cain, was almost as bad in Block 1, posting a 2-5 record and a 5.52 ERA, although he did have 47 strikeouts in 45.2 innings. Cain, also very young at 24, is in no danger of being traded. Not so secure is Doug Davis (2-6, 6.20), whose 238-strikeout season seems decades ago and whose welcome is starting to grow very thin in Gotham.

Oh, and lest we forget, Dontrelle Willis has not even thrown an inning yet. Does anyone reasonably expect him to improve this team?

Only the ageless Orlando Hernandez turned in an excellent Block 1, posting a 3-4 record and a 4.24 ERA. But as usual, there’s a catch – Hernandez faces overusage issues and will probably be supplanted in the rotation by Willis. Ugliness may ensue.

We wager that the rotation will be Pak’s next project in the 2009 draft.

So why were the Knights so bad in Block 1? Call it a perfect storm of underachievement, lack of foresight and plain old bad luck. While playoff contention is very unlikely, the Knights have enough talent to play better and perhaps avoid 100 losses. That’s probably the best Knights fans can hope for now.