LaRussa: Blogs are useless

On July 7, Dave Cameron sat in his North Carolina home, hunched over a computer screen and obsessing over a non-televised ballgame 3,000 miles away. It was a Saturday match-up at the Coliseum in Oakland that pitted the Seattle Mariners and 21-year-old pitching phenom Felix Hernandez against the hometown A’s. Using an Internet tracker that produces live updates, Cameron charted balls, strikes and — most crucial on this particular occasion — pitch location and velocity.

Summer nights with a computer and a ballgame aren’t unusual for Cameron. Since 2003, along with Derek Zumsteg and Jason Michael Barker, he has put nearly twenty hours a week (and his own money) into the U.S.S. Mariner, a blog devoted to all things Seattle Mariners. Cameron says he has been following Hernandez since the latter was a sixteen-year-old the Mariners signed out of Venezuela’s amateur leagues. (The blogger also coined Hernandez’s nickname: “King Felix.”)

In late June, Cameron, who spends his days working as a corporate cost analyst for Hanes clothing, penned a post he titled “An Open Letter to Rafael Chaves,” imploring Mariners pitching coach Rafael Chaves to get Hernandez to throw more breaking balls in the early innings. The post, which contained detailed evidence in support of the fact that Hernandez was getting crushed early in games by opposing batters who could confidently anticipate seeing his fastball, was the culmination of a months-long crusade by the U.S.S. Mariner to alter the approach of the frustratingly inconsistent but immensely gifted youngster.

After the M’s-A’s game, the victorious Hernandez, who allowed no runs and only two hits in eight innings, told reporters, “Chaves gave me a report. On the Internet, they say when I throw a lot of fastballs in the first inning they score a lot of runs. I tried to mix all my pitches in the first inning.”

Informed of Hernandez’s abrupt turnaround and the pitcher’s willingness to tip his hat to a fan blog, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa responds with skepticism. “If that’s true, then the [Mariners] pitching coach isn’t doing his job,” says La Russa. “I think blogs are things that are fun, and I love that people are interested in the game. But I don’t take ‘em seriously.”

The skipper’s sentiment comes as no surprise to Larry Borowsky, Denver-based creator of the popular Cardinals blog Viva El Birdos (www.vivaelbirdos.com). “I don’t think what happened in Seattle could ever happen on a Tony La Russa-managed team,” Borowsky says. “I would like to think there are people within the organization that value that input. But I don’t think [pitching coach] Dave Duncan and Tony La Russa are the guys who value that information.”

Borowsky cites several instances in which the Cardinals might have benefited from his observations, including a long-running campaign questioning the team’s handling of 25-year-old pitcher Anthony Reyes, who’s back in the minor leagues after starting this season 0-10 with the big club. Borowsky believes Reyes’ struggles are the result of La Russa’s and Duncan’s well-documented predilection for ground ball-inducing pitchers. Forcing Reyes to perfect a two-seam fastball that sinks and forgo his four-seamer, which crosses the plate high in the strike zone — and which made him successful in the minors — is, Borowsky maintains, a self-confidence-killing recipe for disaster.