BASEBALL : Winfield Answers Softly When Question Is About Trade

Dave Winfield has spent too many years working for New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner to discuss the possibility of a trade to the Angels.

He knows that saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can produce more turmoil for him, and he already believes that no player--aside from Jackie Robinson--has ever been through more.

At 38 and having missed the entire 1989 season because of back surgery, Winfield is confident that he will regain his All-Star form in 1990 and carry it beyond.

Maybe even as far as Anaheim? Would he like that? Would he approve a trade involving the Angels?

He smiled and said:

“The only thing I can tell you is that I’m going to play five more years and believe I can still play 155 games a year at my previous level.

“I want to win. I want to have fun. I don’t want to be abused.”

His attorney, Jeff Klein, provided some additional insight.

“The Angels are obviously a good team in a strong division, and they’ve evidenced a commitment to winning,” he said.

“Dave enjoys the environment. He and his wife (Tonya) live there (in Beverly Hills). He thinks it’s a nice place to play and that the ball carries well at the Big A. Other than that, it’s hard to respond to rumors.

“I mean, Dave is not looking to leave New York. He’s been great for the city, and the city has been great to him.”

As a player with 10 or more seasons in the major leagues and five or more with the same team, Winfield’s consent is necessary for any trade. He said he has not been approached regarding the Angels, though the respective general managers acknowledge they have talked.

The Angels, with a surplus of starting pitchers, are pursuing a run-producing outfielder or a bona fide leadoff hitter.

The list is believed to include Von Hayes, Rob Deer, Lenny Dykstra, Tim Raines, Cory Snyder and Winfield.

The Yankees, in turn, need pitching. Their rotation, so to speak, includes Pascual Perez, Tim Leary, Andy Hawkins and some mystery guests.

The Angels are believed to have offered Mike Witt, but Steinbrenner, despite his well-documented dislike for Winfield, said publicly the other day that he has no interest in Witt, whom he once pursued as a free agent but who was 22-31 over the last two years and may lack the temperament to pitch in the Bronx.

The question then becomes:

Would the Angels deal Kirk McCaskill, knowing it would also cost them a buyout of Winfield’s veto rights and renegotiation of a contract that expires at the end of the 1990 season, when Winfield can become a free agent?

There are reasons to believe they will seriously consider it. Among them:

--There is mutual respect between Winfield and General Manager Mike Port, both of whom were with the San Diego Padres in the 1970s.

--Because of his athleticism, age may not be the deterrent it is with some other players. In 1988, at 36, Winfield had one of his best seasons, batting .322 with 25 homers and 107 runs batted in.

--Amid nine years of almost constant turmoil with the Yankees, Winfield has displayed leadership, stability and fortitude, qualities that a team would seem to want.

First, of course, Winfield must prove to Angel scouts--former manager Cookie Rojas, among them--that he is physically sound.

The process is accelerating.

Winfield served as a designated hitter Thursday, his first competitive appearance since September of ’88. He is expected to play the outfield today.

“I’ll be ready opening day, I guarantee it,” he said. “Physically, I’m there, but it takes awhile to get the synchronization and coordination (at the plate). The hits will come, the confidence will come. I’m glad to be part of it again.”

Winfield had fragments of a herniated disk removed by Dr. Robert Watkins at Centinela Hospital Medical Center after the stiffness he began experiencing during a four-hour bus ride in the spring of 1988 turned to pain last spring.

He rehabilitated with weights and exercise, and believes that the summer out of uniform might have been mentally therapeutic as well.

“I wanted to be there, but I didn’t allow myself to ride an emotional roller coaster,” he said. “I tried to avoid feelings of frustration. I tried to stay on an even keel.

“I mean, the way I look at it, I added a year to my career.”

Winfield won’t make an issue of it, but he is obviously displeased that the Yankees are moving him from right field to left, leaving Jesse Barfield in right and Roberto Kelly in center.

Barfield and Winfield each believes he is baseball’s best right fielder.

“It’s like if they wanted Kareem to play guard when he was the best center in basketball,” Winfield said, forcing a smile. “What could he do? He’d play guard.”

No one was more surprised by the Yankees’ $5.7-million signing of the eccentric Pascual Perez than Buck Rodgers, his former manager with the Montreal Expos.

“He’s a sick man, a time bomb,” Rodgers said. “He wants to do well and stay clean, but he needs help.”

The Expos, Rodgers said, provided that help during Perez’s drug rehabilitation, then were snubbed when he left as a free agent.

“After you take a guy out of the gutter, you would think he would want to come back, but his agent didn’t even give us a second chance after he got the offer from New York,” Rodgers said, adding that Perez figures to be immune to the pressures of Steinbrenner and Yankee Stadium.

“Nothing’s going to bother Pascual because he’s in his own world,” Rodgers said. “It doesn’t matter if he’s pitching in Des Moines, Iowa, or New York City.”

One of the pivotal questions of the abbreviated spring for the New York Mets concerned the ability of former infielder Keith Miller to play center field, allowing Kevin McReynolds to remain in left and Mike Marshall to move from the outfield to first base.

Alluding to another former infielder who played center field for the Mets last year, Manager Davey Johnson said of Miller:

“I know he’s going to be better than Juan Samuel was. I look for him to be a spark for us. I look for him to hit .250 and do the little things. He’s going to help get us going. What he hits is not as important as his enthusiasm.”

Cal Ripken, the Baltimore Oriole shortstop, remains frustrated over the September slump that might have cost his surprising team the American League East championship and enabled Robin Yount to win the most-valuable-player award.

Ripken hit .198 in September. He also slumped in September of 1988, batting .216, but he does not believe that the late collapses are a result of fatigue from his streak of consecutive games, now at 1,250.

“I wanted to contribute. I wanted to drive in runs. I wanted to help us win so badly that I fell back into the same bad habits,” Ripken said of last September as it related to the previous September.

“I felt I could hit balls out of the strike zone. The word travels pretty quickly when they’re getting you out that way. If you’re stubborn enough and dumb enough to keep doing it, they’ll keep doing it, too.”

The Atlanta Braves have converted their succession of early draft choices into what Don Sutton, now doing color commentary on Atlanta telecasts, calls the most talented collection of young pitchers he has ever seen.

Sutton is particularly high on 19-year-old Steve Avery, 19-8 in two minor league seasons after being selected third in the 1988 draft.

“Avery is an absolute franchise pitcher,” Sutton said. “He has the best mechanics of any young pitcher I’ve seen in 25 years. The Braves ought to hire a sniper so that they can pick off anybody that tries to change him. Just leave him alone.”

Cecil Fielder, who played for the Hanshin Tigers in Japan last year, was immediately named cleanup hitter by Detroit Tiger Manager Sparky Anderson Wednesday when he hit home runs on three consecutive pitches by three St. Louis Cardinal pitchers.

Fielder has never been to bat more than 176 times in a major league season, but as Cardinal catcher Tom Pagnozzi said of the hefty DH:

“He looked like King Kong today. He was King Kong. You think Sparky will have him in the Hall of Fame tomorrow?”

The possibility of a 27 player roster over the first 21 days of the season has been reborn. Despite Wednesday’s contrary directive from the owners’ Player Relations Committee, negotiations have resumed in New York concerning the roster issue.

No one knows yet whether clubs will open with 27, 25 or 24 players, but the fact that a simple issue has become so complicated illustrates that the relationship between management and players will never be free of greed and selfishness.

St. Louis Manager Whitey Herzog said rescinding the 27-man roster represented the silliest decision ever.

“For the good of the game they ought to let the people on the field start making decisions again,” he said. “We play 20 straight days starting with the fourth day of the season, and I may use 90 to 100 pitchers in those 20 games. You may see teams get buried, key pitchers hurt.

“I hope none of mine do. But if some of the Mets do, well . . .”