Baseball / Ross Newhan : Joyner Is Having Greater Impact on Angels Than His Statistics

In a season of disappearing pennant races, there is a chance for a strange occurence in the postseason awards. The Angels’ Wally Joyner could be chosen the American League’s Most Valuable Player but not Rookie of the Year.

Much depends on Joyner’s final six weeks, of course, and much depends on what the Oakland A’s Jose Canseco does.

Here’s the thinking:

With no clear-cut or runaway candidate for MVP, the legitimate possibilities are Roger Clemens of the Boston Red Sox, Don Mattingly of the New York Yankees, Jesse Barfield of the Toronto Blue Jays, Kirby Puckett of the Minnesota Twins and Joyner.

The 1985 award went to Mattingly, who is having another strong season but probably will not carry the Yankees to an Eastern Division title.

There is no rule saying that the MVP has to come from a division winner, but that’s the essence of the award. The true measure of an MVP is his impact on his team.

No one has had a greater impact in ’86 than Clemens and Joyner, whose teams seem to be heading toward a playoff meeting.

Clemens, as a pitcher, contributes every five days. He has done that significantly, having posted 11 of his 19 wins after Boston losses. Joyner, as a first baseman, does it daily. His bat was the missing link for a team that finished one game behind Kansas City last season and three back in 1984.

The Angels would probably have won both years given Joyner’s 1986 statistics, which remain among the league’s best.

Even now, with their improved pitching, it is unlikely that the Angels would be leading the division without Joyner’s numbers. And in the case of both Joyner and Clemens, it goes beyond the statistics. Their consistency and performances under pressure have helped re-structure the attitude and approach of two teams conditioned to failure.

At this point, Joyner would be the choice here over Clemens, with Barfield, Puckett and Mattingly rounding out the top five.

As for the rookie award, which is based primarily on statistics rather than a combination of statistics, impact and intangibles, Canseco could still put away a field that has been better than advertised.

Seattle’s Danny Tartabull and Cleveland’s Cory Snyder may continue their torrid second halves and challenge Canseco and Joyner.

Snyder, who was not recalled until June 12, has 16 homers and 40 runs batted in. Tartabull, who missed more than 20 games because of anemia, has 23 homers and 80 RBIs.

Canseco still leads the league in RBIs with 95 and has 26 home runs, four behind league leader Barfield, but went 0 for 40 until hitting a game-winning RBI double Saturday night.

He refused to elaborate when he told the Bay Area media: “There’s just a lot of outside influences that make it difficult for me to hit as well as I should right now.” He later added, matter-of-factly: “When I write a book, you can read all about it.”

As for the rookie award, Canseco cited Joyner’s playing for a first-place team in a larger media market and said: “For me to have a chance, I have to hit 5 to 10 more home runs than he does. Who knows? He may outhit me and win it fair and square. But if it’s close, he’ll win it hands down.”

Canseco also cited his Latin ancestry and said there’s ethnic prejudice involved, that he lacks Joyner’s popularity. “Some people out there still think I can’t speak English,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”

Not any more so than that contention.

Add Awards: Boston General Manager Lou Gorman appears headed for Executive of the Year honors with his second-half acquisitions of pitcher Tom Seaver and shortstop Spike Owen. Gorman got Seaver for Steve Lyons, a player the Chicago White Sox have since sent to Buffalo, and got Owen from Seattle for shortstop Rey Quinones and three players who no longer figured in Boston’s plans--pitchers Mike Brown and Mike Trujillo, and outfielder John Christensen.

Boston has two players from the 1983 Texas team that won the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. championship--Clemens and Calvin Schiraldi. And in Owen, the Red Sox have a shortstop who should stabilize a position at which they had unsuccessfully employed Glenn Hoffman, Ed Romero and Quinones.

George Steinbrenner, whose Yankees have used Bobby Meacham, Dale Berra, Mike Fischlin, Ivan DeJesus, Wayne Tolleson and Paul Zuvella at shortstop this year, said of Boston’s latest acquisition: “It’s the deal of the century. My people were asleep at the wheel on this one.”

Add Yankees: For a team that has had 40 players on its roster this year and employed 12 starting pitchers, 8 of them during a recent 13-game span, missing on Owen wasn’t as critical as failing to improve the pitching while Cleveland handed Neal Heaton to Minnesota for John Butcher; Pittsburgh gave Jose DeLeon to the White Sox for Bobby Bonilla, and Milwaukee sent Danny Darwin to Houston for Mark Knudson.

Yankee relief pitcher Dave Righetti said that, as usual, the Yankees have to overcome themselves before they can overcome the Red Sox: “Boston hasn’t taken this thing by the horns, but it’s not like we’re chasing Boston as much as ourselves.”

Rumor: Minnesota will fire Manager Ray Miller when the season ends and hire former Kansas City Royals and Chicago Cubs manager Jim Frey. That move would not bother seldom used former Dodger Mickey Hatcher, who said of Miller: “I never know what the guy is going to do, what moves he’s going to make, who he’s going to play. A lot of guys on this team have struggled, but he doesn’t treat them like he treats me.”

Now with Detroit, former Angel pitcher Jim Slaton is calling himself the janitor. “All I do is mop up,” he said.

The Chicago White Sox have benched Carlton Fisk in favor of a late season look at rookie Ron Karkovice. Manager Jim Fregosi doesn’t believe an explanation is necessary when a 38-year-old catcher is hitting .215. Some believe, however, that the real explanation is that the White Sox are attempting to anger Fisk to the point that he will waive his no-trade provisions.

Fisk is among those believers. “I’m wondering if this is a nice little premeditated move to make me angry enough to do something,” he said. The White Sox tried to trade Fisk last winter and then angered him more with the move to left field.

“It’s been evident for close to a year now that they thought I should be elsewhere,” Fisk said. “But why, I don’t understand. I feel like from Day 1 my situation has been approached less than honorably.”

In the ninth inning of consecutive games last weekend, Minnesota’s Keith Atherton yielded game-winning homers to Seattle’s Alvin Davis. Atherton, after the second, was asked what his first thought had been. “Suicide,” he said.

Since his release by Philadelphia, Dave Stewart is 6-1 with a 2.94 earned-run average as an Oakland starter. A victory Wednesday night over Baltimore was his sweetest yet, Stewart said, because only the Orioles, of the teams he talked with after being released by the Phillies, elected to demean him.

“They told me I was no better than a double-A pitcher,” he said. “Well, I’ve seen their triple-A staff and big league staff and I know I’m better than a lot of what they have on talent alone.”

A source with the Major League Players Assn. said the union is closely watching what it perceives to be a budding conspiracy similar to last winter’s free-agent freeze-out. San Diego, Kansas City and Philadelphia have all indicated that they will not give out multiyear contracts because of the arbitration decision that ruled the inclusion of drug testing clauses unenforceable.

Barry Rona, legal counsel to the owners’ Player Relations Committee, said that the PRC has long advocated judicious use of multiyear contracts because the clubs seldom get full return on their money but that it has not told the clubs to dump multi-year contracts completely.

Vice President Al Campanis said the Dodgers have yet to discuss the situation. Mike Port, his counterpart with the Angels, said that they are not planning to drop multiyear contracts but may have a new reluctance to guarantee them.

“I think you can be fair to the player and fair to the club without guaranteeing everything from sunup to sundown,” he said. “We’re going to pay close attention to what we guarantee and what we don’t.”