Baseball : One More Look Back at Clark’s Homer

A new season will start Monday--an opportunity for the Dodgers to rise above the injury to Pedro Guerrero and purge the memory of that sad and sudden conclusion to their 1985 season.

Is it possible? Can Tom Lasorda and Tom Niedenfuer ever forget? Will they ever be allowed to forget?

The latest reminder is found on Page 122 of “The 1986 Elias Baseball Analyst,” compiled by the Elias News Bureau in New York, possibly the best statistical book ever.

It will be recalled--painfully, perhaps--that Jack Clark, batting with two outs, runners at second and third and the Dodgers leading, 5-4, in the ninth inning of playoff Game 6, hit a three-run homer off Niedenfuer to thrust the St. Louis Cardinals into the World Series.

Should Niedenfuer have been allowed to pitch to Clark or should he have issued an intentional walk and pitched to left-hander Andy Van Slyke?

Wrote the Elias statisticians:

“We would have been determined not to let Clark beat us, but that’s our judgment.”

That judgment was based on Clark’s record in late-inning pressure situations--the seventh inning or later with the score tied or the batter’s team trailing by three runs or fewer.

Although Van Slyke had a better average against Niedenfuer--a flashy .600 based on three hits in five at-bats, compared to Clark’s 4 for 17 or .235--the late-inning comparison is all Clark.

Over the last three seasons he has hit .345 in late-inning pressure situations, 100 points higher than Van Slyke. Clark has also responded to those late-inning situations by driving in 40% of the runners in scoring position. Ozzie Virgil and Tony Gwynn are the only National League hitters with a higher percentage.

In addition, with runners in scoring position and two outs in late-inning pressure situations, Clark has hit .333--7 for 21--since 1983. Van Slyke, meanwhile, has only two singles in 18 at-bats.

Lasorda, of course, did not have a computer at his disposal. He might have been aware of Clark’s and Van Slyke’s career records against Niedenfuer, but no club does the in-depth tracking that Elias does.

And as the authors concluded:

“We don’t think the stats prove anything; we just hope they spice up the discussion, and help to ease those sleepless nights.”

Will Guerrero really only miss three months? Kansas City Royals pitcher Dennis Leonard suffered the same injury on May 28, 1983, and did not pitch again for two years. He has been in only two big league games since.

How much will the Dodgers miss Guerrero? Some of it is obvious, of course. Guerrero hit .320 last season, drove in 87 runs and hit 33 home runs.

But he was an even greater threat in those late-inning situations, according to the Elias statistics.

Guerrero led the league in slugging average at .577 last season, and in late-inning situations it was 100 points higher. And his career batting average of .314 in late-inning situations is six points higher than his overall career mark.

Anticipating fewer runs because of Guerrero’s loss, Bill Madlock noted that the Dodgers must tighten up their defense, a noble goal that may be as difficult to attain as it will be to forget the Clark-Niedenfuer confrontation.

The Dodgers, through Friday, had 43 errors in 27 spring games. That in the wake of having made a league-leading 166 errors last season, when they turned only 131 double plays and ranked 11th, ahead of only the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Dodgers would have become the first team since the 1925 Pirates to win a pennant and lead the league in errors had they won the playoff with St. Louis.

No team in the National League, according to the Elias statistics, was as sensitive to errors as the Dodgers. They were 91-52 in games in which they made two errors or fewer and 4-15 in games in which they made three or more. They had 43 multi-error games, 10 more than the league average.

Here’s the latest example of the poise and leadership Joaquin Andujar has been displaying with the Oakland A’s, which is believed to be one reason Commissioner Peter Ueberroth reduced his season-opening suspension from 10 days to five:

Pitching in a triple-A game at Mesa, Ariz., the other day, Andujar absorbed five innings of heckling by a fan who ultimately found himself face to face with the pitcher. Andujar smiled, extended his hand and said, “I’m very happy you could be here today.”

Wasn’t it only yesterday that the ownership of the A’s was wallowing in unsold Levi’s and crying about financial problems. Now, in addition to Andujar’s 1986 salary of $1,270,000, the A’s have taken on the $775,000 salary of pitcher Moose Haas, who was acquired from the Milwaukee Brewers last week.

Haas and Andujar have more in common than their tax bracket. Haas was 15-8 with the Brewers last year but went 1-5 with a 6.00 earned-run average after throwing a one-hitter against the New York Yankees June 29. Andujar was 21-12 with St. Louis but went 4-8 with a 5.68 ERA over his last 15 starts.

Said Haas, when asked if he is related to Walter Haas, the Oakland owner: “I don’t believe so, but you can bet I’m going to start checking my family tree.”

Department of Strange Statistics:

--Phil Niekro has won 300 games. The other four members of the Cleveland Indian rotation--Neal Heaton, Tom Candiotti, Ken Schrom and Jose Roman--have a total of 300 starts.

Add Niekro: “The more I talked to them, the more they convinced me this was not a publicity move,” he said of his signing with the Indians.

It was a move born of desperation. The Indians had a spring batting average of .321 through Thursday. They were averaging 12 hits and 7.5 runs a game, but the staff ERA was 5.44.

Niekro will make his first start in the Indians’ home opener against Detroit Friday, then will face his former employers, the New York Yankees, April 15 or 16. His pitching adversary could be brother Joe.

The Atlanta Braves have ordered T-shirts that read: “I Survived the April Fools’ Day Chainsaw Massacre.”

Catcher Ozzie Virgil established the mood when he said: “I’ve heard of the guillotine falling, but they took a chainsaw through here today.”

He alluded to the April Fools’ Day release of pitchers Len Barker, Rick Camp, Terry Forster and Pascual Perez, who were a combined 9-31 last year while earning a total of $2.3 million.

The release of Barker and Camp forces Atlanta to swallow $2.85 million and $600,000 in guaranteed salaries, respectively. The release of Forster and Perez, however, enables the Braves to save $490,000 and $360,000, respectively.

Manager Chuck Tanner announced March 16 that Perez, 1-13 last year, had made the team.

Perez responded by reverting to previous work habits. He reportedly missed a team meeting, was late for practice three times, missed a team bus to Tampa and left the stadium last Monday without permission after telling trainers he had an upset stomach.

Asked if Perez’s idiosyncrasies played a part in his release, general manager Bobby Cox said: “We thought about that, but it doesn’t take much of a genius to count to one.”

The reference was to the number of games Perez won last year.

Shortstop Onix Concepcion, released by Kansas City, said he will return to Puerto Rico and retire.

“If a guy like Buddy Biancalana can beat me out,” he said, “I can’t play anymore. I’ll just go home and get a job. I’ll probably work in a casino like my father.”

Biancalana, David Letterman’s whipping boy who became a cult figure during the World Series, entered the final weekend of spring training hitting .186, indicating that his .188 of last year was no fluke. Concepcion is gone, but Biancalana will share the position with Argenis Salazar, who was acquired recently from the New York Mets.

Bret Saberhagen, who was scratched as Kansas City’s opening-day pitcher because of lingering stiffness in his shoulder, will pitch Game 3 Thursday in New York. Saberhagen’s shoulder is apparently 100% again.

Now the Royals are concerned about an ankle that Danny Jackson twisted Thursday. X-rays showed a bone chip. Jackson will be re-examined Monday in Kansas City to determine if it’s a new or old chip. He is expected to continue pitching if it’s an old one. A new chip may require surgery.

The Texas Rangers will not only open the season with three rookies--Jose Guzman, Ed Correa and Bobby Witt--in their starting rotation, they will have two more--Matt Williams and Dwayne Henry--in the bullpen. The five have appeared in only 54 games above the double-A level.

Toronto seems to be the forgotten team in the AL East. All that’s remembered is that the Blue Jays blew a 3-1 lead against Kansas City in the championship series.

This is a team that won 99 games during the regular season and still seems to have the best pitching and defense in a primarily offense-oriented division.

“It’s not like we have players who are on the downhill side,” Manager Jimy Williams noted the other day. “No one drove in 100 runs, no one scored 100 runs, no one won 20 games and no one saved 30. We still won 99 games and we still have the guy who can have a great season.”

Jesse Barfield? Lloyd Moseby? Willie Upshaw? George Bell?

“It could be any of them,” Williams said. “It could be just about anyone on our team.”

Athletes often view sportswriters as a pain in the posterior.

Billy Joe Robidoux, Milwaukee’s rookie first baseman, found this to be the case literally the other day.

Robidoux was standing at his locker, talking with Tom (Flags) Flaherty of the Milwaukee Journal, when he shifted his weight and suffered a muscle spasm in the . . . posterior.

Robidoux had to be scratched from the lineup that day.

Cleveland catcher Jerry Willard, who hit .270 in 104 games last year, was among the “name” players released last week. The Indians will go with Andy Allanson, who hit .312 at the double-A level and has never hit a home run as a pro.

“They’re going with the kid,” Willard, 26, said of Allanson, 24. “They’ll be sorry.

“They think he can do the job, but I say he can’t. They say he can, but I’m right.

“For some reason the Indians just don’t want to get better.”