Only in the NYT

I saw this story on Deadspin on November 1. I didn't blog about it because, well, I was on vacation at the time and then, I forgot about it.

The gist of the story has to do with a former Appleton Fox. You may have heard of him.

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?”

And the $350 million contract was offered -- with some big time incentives.

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.

That's all?

The New York Times catches up with the story today. No, not catches up with it. Adds on to it. The question here is, "Could Alex Rodriguez meet the offensive incentives in Toledo?"

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 a little about the Stadium of the Yakult Swallows of Japanese baseball (less than 300 feet down each line and only 340' to the power alleys) and by using the equivalencies the formula figures that A-Rod could hit 94 homers for the Swallows.

Long way to go to get to the title of the post, but here are the last two paragraphs of the NYT story.

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.

Yep, the myth of Tantalus (where we get the word tantalize) is the first thing that popped into my head as I read this story.