Baseball : Angels and Blyleven Trying to Work Out Contract Differences

Another contract problem? Another breakdown in relations? Another chance for Angel owner Gene Autry to re-examine General Manager Mike Port’s approach to his players?

On the surface, recent developments involving Bert Blyleven’s contract would seem to be all of those.

Acquired from the Minnesota Twins in November, Blyleven has already filed a grievance against the Angels, and the Angels have filed one against him.

For the moment, however, both sides are still working toward peace--or, at least, a 2-year contract for the 37-year-old pitcher who lives in Villa Park, near Anaheim Stadium.

“Bert is still very happy to be with the Angels,” said his attorney, Richard Moss. “It’s what he has wanted for a long time.”

However, unless Moss and Port can agree on a 2-year contract, an arbitrator will have to resolve the grievances.

Blyleven filed his when the Angels tendered a salary of $960,000 for 1989.

They then tendered a second contract with a salary of $1.18 million, but accompanied it with their own grievance.

In each case, the salary represents the maximum 20% pay cut, depending on which side is making the interpretation.

The problem evolves from a 2-year contract extension Blyleven signed with Minnesota in 1985, after he was acquired from the Cleveland Indians.

The extension, which Blyleven signed with a year remaining on his existing contract, provided $2.95 million in addition to his $650,000 salary for 1986.

The Angels contend that the total value for the 3 years--the basis for measuring a pay cut for a player coming off a multiyear contract--was $3.6 million, an average of $1.2 million a year. By reducing that 20%, they arrived at $960,000.

Blyleven and Moss argue that only the new money, $2.95 million, should be counted and averaged for 2 years, which would be $1,475,000. Eighty percent of that is $1.18 million.

The Angels tendered that figure in their second contract and accompanied it with their own grievance, rather than risk losing Blyleven as a free agent if the initial tender, $960,000, was ruled inaccurate by an arbitrator.

No hearing date has been set yet. In the meantime, Moss is conducting what he calls amicable negotiations with Port on a 2-year contract.

Blyleven had a 10-17 record last year and doesn’t dispute that the cut is in order, Moss said, but only if it’s the $1.18 million, which actually represents a $180,000 raise over his 1988 salary.

“Bert recognizes that he is not coming off his best year,” Moss said. “But he’s confident of his ability to pitch well in the future.

“He’s confident he can pitch another 4 or 5 years. He’d like to have a little security and that’s what we’re working on.”

He has heard the questions before and will hear them again. Jim Abbott seems prepared to maintain the patience and poise he again displayed at an Anaheim Stadium news conference last week.

It was a local unveiling of the Angels’ No. 1 draft choice of last June, the Michigan All-American and Sullivan Award winner who was born without a right hand but has proved he only needs his left on a pitching mound.

Abbott will accompany the Angels to spring training but is expected to open the season at Midland of the double-A Texas League.

He said minor league travel can’t be any longer or harder than his recent odyssey, which included trips to Japan, Italy and Cuba before the Olympic Games in South Korea, where he pitched the United States to a gold-medal victory over Japan.

“Facing the Cubans swinging aluminum bats is tough, too,” he said, when asked what he expects in the minors.

Will there be bench jockeying about his handicap?

“I expect so,” he said. “But the Michigan State Spartans can be cruel as well. I’ve faced that all my life and it has the tendency to bounce off.”

There will be other challenges, of course. Teams will bunt and attempt to hit the ball up the middle. Abbott doesn’t think he has anything to prove as a fielder and won’t go about it any differently than he ever has.

No prosthesis? Abbott said he tried one as a youth and didn’t like it.

“I thought it was just that--artificial,” he said. “I didn’t like the attention it brought and I didn’t like the artificiality.

“My feeling is that even if I could grow a right hand today and play catch with it, I don’t think I would do it. This was the way I learned. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

In other words, no excuses.

“If I don’t make it there’ll be nothing or no one to blame it on except my own absence of pitching ability,” he said.

The escalating salaries of the current winter, generated in many cases by the threat of arbitration, prompted a call to a Chicago insurance man named Charlie Finley, former owner of the Oakland A’s. Finley recalled how he had warned the owners about the dangers of arbitration in 1973, when they approved the process.

“The biggest mistakes baseball ever made were agreeing to arbitration and hiring Bowie Kuhn, the nation’s idiot (rather than just) the village idiot, as commissioner,” he said.

“I warned them. All of the old-timers can tell you that Charlie Finley was violently opposed to (arbitration). I still get sick just thinking about it. It frustrates me that so many owners are that stupid.”

George W. Bush, 42, oldest son of President Bush and a possible candidate for governor of Texas in 1990, and Bill DeWitt Jr., son of the former owner of the Cincinnati Reds, head a group that is expected to make a bid for the Texas Rangers, once the bid of Edward Gaylord formally ends.

Gaylord, a cable television magnate who already owns 33% of the Rangers, has reportedly offered $46.4 million for Eddie Chiles’ 58%, but the American League’s ownership committee has recommended that Gaylord be rejected on the basis of ownership guidelines that disapprove of any more clubs being owned by cable interests.

Gaylord can now either withdraw his bid or carry it to all 14 owners, 10 of whose votes would be needed for approval--an impossibility, according to all indications.

Having lost 202 games in the last 2 seasons, the Baltimore Orioles continue to travel the logical road, reducing their age and payroll in an attempt to rebuild with younger players.

They made the latest such move last Tuesday, trading catcher Terry Kennedy, who is 32 and made $850,000 last year, to the San Francisco Giants for catcher Bob Melvin, who is 27 and made $145,000.

Melvin, a lifetime .220 hitter known for his defense and strong arm, will play mostly against left-handers, with Mickey Tettleton playing against right-handers.

The trade leaves the Orioles with only two players in their 30s--pitchers Mark Thurmond, 30, and Dave Schmidt, 31.

Since the start of last season, the Orioles have traded or released eight players 30 or older: Kennedy, Eddie Murray, Fred Lynn, Jim Dwyer, Don Aase, Mike Boddicker, Scott McGregor and Doug Sisk.

Those eight, plus relief pitcher Tom Niedenfuer, who was allowed to leave as a free agent and signed with the Seattle Mariners, earned a combined $8,684,075 last year.

Kennedy is a 4-time All-Star, but he hit .226 last year, lost some of his bat speed, according to Manager Frank Robinson, and was one of only two American League players, based on a minimum of 200 at-bats, to ground into as many double plays as he had extra-base hits.

New York Yankee shortstop Rafael Santana was the other.

Before trading Melvin, the Giants had also lost veteran catcher Bob Brenly to the Toronto Blue Jays as a free agent.

Kennedy will provide experience behind Kirt Manwaring, who hit .250 in 40 games as a rookie last year and will begin the 1989 season as the club’s No. 1 catcher.

The Giants are also hoping that a return to the National League, where he had his best seasons with the San Diego Padres, will be an elixir for Kennedy, who is also being reunited with his father, Bob, the Giants’ vice president of baseball operations.

The younger Kennedy implied that he had not been looking forward to another spring training with the Orioles, whose Miami training facility has been used to house Nicaraguan refugees this winter.

“I was wondering how many Nicaraguans I was going to have to share my locker with,” Kennedy said after learning he was traded.

Cheap Shot Dept.: In the most recent issue of Yankees Magazine, a monthly publication produced by the New York Yankees, a caption next to a picture of Steve Sax reads: “The newest Yankee second baseman will bring a sense of stability to the infield.”

Stability? Wasn’t that Willie Randolph’s trademark during his 13 years as the Yankee second baseman, in the last 3 of which he also served as captain.

Wasn’t it, in fact, because of Randolph’s stability that the Yankees did as well as they did despite forcing their second baseman to adjust to 31 different shortstops in those 13 years?

Randolph learned from reporters that he had been dumped by the Yankees. Longtime teammate Ron Guidry, who received comparably shoddy treatment, has also been approached by the Dodgers, but he is reportedly leaning toward offers from the Twins and Toronto Blue Jays.

A decision regarding possible financial penalties in the Collusion I case will be announced on or about April 15, sources close to arbitrator Tom Roberts say.

Rumors persist that the Boston Red Sox, fed up with the ongoing publicity stemming from Margo Adams’ palimony suit and looking to replace pitcher Bruce Hurst, will trade Wade Boggs to the pitching rich Houston Astros for a package that could include Mike Scott and third baseman Ken Caminiti.

The immediate reaction is to picture the slashing Boggs posting even more impressive numbers than normal on the wide open rug of the Astrodome.

Boggs, however, has been a better hitter on grass, .358, than on turf, .346, and he has been a far better hitter in Boston’s Fenway Park, .384, than on the road, .328.

The theory is that Boggs has benefited from the scarcity of foul territory at Fenway and the proximity of the left-field wall.

Boggs sliced 15 hits off the Green Monster last year, more than any other player. In a larger park, such as the Astrodome, 10 of those might have been fly-ball outs, in which case Boggs would have hit a mere .349 rather than .366, and Kirby Puckett would have won the American League batting title at .356.

It is also being rumored that the Seattle Mariners are trying to move pitcher Mark Langston, who has filed for $1.5 million in salary arbitration and is reportedly seeking a 3-year, $6-million contract from the Mariners.

A deal that would have sent Langston and outfielder Jay Buhner to the New York Mets for infielder Howard Johnson and pitchers Sid Fernandez and the promising David West was reportedly rejected by the Mariners out of concern over Fernandez’s persistent weight problems and Johnson’s off-season knee surgery.

Now it’s Trader Jack McKeon and the San Diego Padres who are reportedly hot on Langston’s trail, offering catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. in a package that would also include a pitcher, preferably Walt Terrell from the Padres’ standpoint and Dennis Rasmussen from the Mariners.

The support- and publicity-starved Langston would obviously love the move. Not only does it represent a chance to pitch in the same rotation as Bruce Hurst, but to play in the same musical combo. Langston plays the guitar, Hurst the drums. On a night off in Seattle last year, they jammed at a local club.

Research by Rolaids shows that Steve Bedrosian of the Philadelphia Phillies has been the most instrumental relief pitcher of the last 3 years, in contributing to his team’s victories.

Bedrosian has either saved or won 50.2% of the Phillies’ victories. Todd Worrell of the St. Louis Cardinals and Jeff Reardon of the Montreal Expos and Minnesota Twins were tied for second at 49.2%.