Today, I Am The Greatest...

In case you haven't noticed, everybody's favorite Hall of Fame leadoff hitter is looking for a job. Specifically, he's trying to coax Billy Beane to sign him to a minor league deal with the As, but Beane doesn't think that the fits on their team.

Rickey Henderson needs a job, ladies and gentlemen, and who am I to stand in the way of the employment of a future 1st ballot Hall of Famer?

That's why I'm here to announce the Top Five Reasons Jim Hendry should sign Henderson to a minor league contract with an invite to spring training:

#1 - Rickey would be perfect as the RH part of a CF platoon

Seems like most of the offseason we heard how Hendry was interested in finding a backup CF who hit right-handed in order to take some of the pressure off of Patterson. Much of the attention was focused on Baker's buddy Tsyuoshi Shinjo, but when he didn't pan out we signed... Tom Goodwin and Charles Gipson? Hmm -- both hit left handed, so there must have been a mixup somewhere. Henderson actually does hit right handed and has already declared that he'd accept a minor league deal to come to camp, so the risk is completely minimal. So far, so good.

#2 - Rickey would be a great mentor for Patterson

Corey's biggest flaw: taking pitches. Rickey's greatest strength: taking pitches. You do the math.

In all seriousness, wouldn't it be great if some of Henderson's game rubbed off onto Patterson just a little bit? Except for the attitude, Henderson could tutor him in reading pitches, working counts and even on reading pitchers pickoff moves to get better jumps on steals. I think he would make an excellent compliment to Patterson.

#3 - Dusty could handle him

That's a pretty big deal in all honesty. Rickey doesn't exactly have the reputation of being a complete team chemistry guy, and that may be one of the reasons that the Cubs are reluctant to sign him. But Baker seems to have something that Grady Little lacked in Boston last year, and that's the ability to make all his players feel as if they are needed and a part of the team. We've all heard comments from players lamenting their lack of playing time (especially when hitting .220 or something), but for some reason I think Baker could probably coax another productive year out of Henderson without being as standoffish as someone like Bobby Valentine. In other words, given that Henderson has said he'd accept a backup role, Baker would be the perfect guy to make him live up to that.

#4 - The Little Things

He's cheap.

He would fit in the lineup well when he starts. Having him hit leadoff would allow Bobby Hill to hit second and would then allow Bellhorn to hit in more of an RBI spot - maybe 6. Can you imagine Rickey leading off a game with a walk and having Hill pull a ball into right with the first baseman holding Henderson on? I think it would happen alot.

He'd also be an excellent late inning pinch runner, when necessary (for Alou anyone?).

#5 - He can still play

Detractors will point to his lower batting averages the past few years as evidence that Rickey hasn't been productive for a few years. The detractors are wrong.

You don't sign Henderson hoping for a surge in power, you don't sign him hoping for a really high batting average and you don't sign him thinking he'll lead the league in steals anymore.

You sign him because he can still get on base. That's it. Plain and simple. Who cares if it's by walk most of the time? He'll still be on base -- last I checked that was just as valuable. Here are his numbers from the past few years:

Year      AB       AVG       OBP        SLG       HR     2B       BB     SB      CS

2000     420     .233       .368       .305       4      14       88     36      11

2001     379     .227       .366       .351       8      17       81     25       7

2002     179     .224       .369       .352       5       6       38      8       2

His OBA is still .370. I could care less about everything else up there. I really could. That OBA is better than every single player on the Cub team last year outside of Sosa and Bellhorn. I say bring him on.

In the end I really doubt that it will happen. I suspect that the Cubs also question his defense a little, much like they did with Rich Becker a few years ago when they were looking for a LH CF (so we ended up trading for Dave Martinez, ugh). Still, though, i think he'd fit in nicely. There's also the issue that if Henderson makes it, our bench would be almost all right handed -- Grudz, Karros, Martinez - leaving only O'Leary and Bako as LH hitters. I say, so what? Why focus on your bench at the expense of your lineup, let alone the development of one of your core players in Patterson?

Free Rickey.

In case anybody is wondering, about 80% of this column was written BEFORE Aaron Gleeman wrote his column yesterday, which was also BEFORE Joe Sheehan's newsletter came out yesterday. Before yesterday, I thought I had an idea for a pretty original column. I guess now I'll just settle for... a column.

Write to me. Thanks for reading.

PITCHERS AND CATCHERS!

That yell you just heard was my own personal exclamation point on three of the most beautiful words in the English Language. I would say the most beautiful, but that place is rightfully held by "Cubs Win" and the place in my heart reserved for Harry Carey. Anyway, the Cubs pitchers report Thursday and I'll have a Spring Training piece up then.

Around the Web

Well, to be more accurate, around ESPN.com.

Peter Gammons has his preview of the National League up, and while nothing that he says is truly interesting anymore, this piece isn't half bad, especially as it pertains to the Cubs. A couple of interesting bits:

He makes an interesting point about the infield defense at the beginning of last year. Much has been written about Fred McGriff impersonating a statue at 1st last year, but let's be honest -- Delino Deshields played alot of 2nd at the beginning of the year and Chris Stynes logged alot of action at 3rd. Neither of these guys will remind anybody of Santo and Ryno, let alone Jose Vizcaino. But it's a point that is worth making, especially with the young pitching on the staff and the ground ball guys like Clement and Zambrano. While Bellhorn's defense is the subject of some debate, I'm quite sure he's not worse than Stynes - just like I'm sure that Bobby Hill will be the best 2nd baseman we've seen since Ryno - easy (I'm not counting the handful of games Rey Sanchez played there).

Of course, this assumes that Bellhorn and Hill play regularly. I make no claims about Grudzielanek and Lenny Harris.

Gammons also has an interesting writeup on the Astros who are getting alot of buzz, and rightfully so, for their addition of Jeff Kent. Craig Biggio moves out to CF, Berkman moves over to LF and their lineup now has the kind of depth that scares opposing pitchers. Bagwell Berkman Kent is a tough 3-4-5.

What I found amusing was this little tidbit: "They all know that manager Jimy Williams likes to use his relievers early and often, which is why they hope that Brad Lidge, who also has dominant stuff, can be a sixth and seventh-inning strikeout man in front of Dotel along with Ricky Stone and Jesus Sanchez."

Jesus Sanchez??? Man, even when Gammons is good he's bad. I hope for our sake that Sanchez is out in that pen because that guy was AWFUL last year -- to the tune of over a million bucks no less. I can't for the life of me imagine that they are expecting Sanchez to contribute this year, let alone be a power middle reliever.

Still, though, I confess I'm more worried about the Astros than the Cardinals, though the Stros have some starting pitching issues with Carlos Hernandez being out for the year. Suddenly Shane Reynolds is #3 and Gammons can talk all he wants about him being healthy and having a good splitter, but when you only throw 87 and hitters can just wait for the splitter - as Reynolds showed last year, you're still not very effective. Kirk Saarloos is a nice change of pace from Oswalt, but he's still a soft tosser with minimal room for error. But enough about the Astros -- I'll have a complete writeup on them when I post my 2003 predictions in a month or so.

Next, Rob Neyer wrote an interesting "letter" to Sandy Alderson of MLB asking him to change the intentional walk rule.

This issue has received alot of attention lately since Jayson Stark also wrote about it in his top 25 things to change about the game column last week, and I must confess that I find most of this completely bizarre.

What is the fascination with changing the rules of the game? Is it because the Giants GM complained during the playoffs last year that Barry Bonds got walked too much? Does anyone out there take any of this seriously? I'm not sure because I can't find anyone who actually played the game who supports any of these ideas, let alone the addition of a completely new statistic -- the "BB4." I can just hear it now:

Play by Play guy: "And that brings up Bonds, who is one for two today with two walks and ... wait, was one of those walks a BB4?"
Color guy: "If it was, that would make this a very dangerous at bat - another BB4 and all the runners would move up 2 bases."
PbPg: "The official scorer seems to be asleep right now, so we'll check on that for you."
-or-
Pbpg: "Since there was a BB4 earlier in the game, the Cubs won't DARE intentionally walk him here. Of course, they will try to pitch around him mostly, and let's see if they walk him after they get a strike on him!"

You get the idea. I refuse to buy into any of this -- it remains pure fantasy of people who have WAY too much time on their hands and who, in all liklihood, never played the game and couldn't tell you the difference between a sinker and a slider if you paid them 100 bucks and Steve Stone had just commented on it.

If you want to see an interesting analysis of the evolution of intentional walks, check out Mike Baseball Rants. Last week, Mike attacked one of the premises of Stark's original column - namely that there are more intentional walks now with a hitter like Bonds than there used to be (which therefore is negatively affecting the game). While I don't think Mike likes me all that much, I think he's right on the money on this one.

Finally, every Cub fan should read last Friday's Baseball America Chat with Jim Callis who wrote the Cub top 30 list for BA. It's one of the longest chats I've ever seen and Callis tried his best to get to every question. I don't agree with everything he said, but oh well - it's still full of information and worth checking out. I'll probably try and dissect some of his answers in a future column.

In the meantime, be sure to let me know what you think. Thanks for all the feedback on the Brendan Harris column.

Write to me here.