Your cast:
Karl Ravech (KR), put-upon host, forced to deal with two former athlete co-workers who do their best to avoid research as well as logic and reason.
John Kruk (JK), fat load, weirdly proud of being consistently wrong.
Harold Reynolds (HR), somehow disdainful of Kruk despite being wrong almost as often.
First, a totally unedited, comment-free (with the exception of descriptions of tone of voice) transcript so you can enjoy the natural ebb and flow of GMC Diamond Cutters. The topic: your pick for AL Cy Young winner.
KR: "The way you always do everything ... Whoever's got the most wins -- that's the guy."
JK: "Why change? I'm consistent, Karl. I'm taking Jon Garland of the Chicago White Sox. He's got 16 wins! His ERA's not horrendous. It's not like he has a 6.00 ERA -- this guy can pitch! And who thought coming into the season that you would be talking about him for a Cy Young anything? I mean, we thought he was going to be their fifth starter. Now, he's their number two starter behind Mark Buehrle, probably should be their number one. But this guy -- there has to be something said for pitching on a winning team and having the the most wins.
KR: "But if Buehrle ends up with more wins than Garland --"
JK: "Then Buehrle wins!"
HR: (sarcastically) "I'm picking the best pitcher. He's got 30 straight saves. He blew two in the beginning of the year against the Boston Red Sox. I'm talking about Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees. His stuff is electric. He's back throwing like no one else in the league right now, and because of him, they're riding this guy all the way to the postseason once again, and to me, he deserves to win a Cy Young."
KR: "Would you ever consider a closer like Gagne a couple years ago?"
JK: "No."
KR: (very dismissively) "No, 'cause they don't win."
JK: "No, because they don't --"
KR: "He's on a winning team, he does answer that."
JK: "Because they don't start. Starters should win the award. They have an award for relievers."
KR: (pauses, then, visibly upset) "Rolaids."
JK: "That's right. I need one."
KR: (embarrassed) "John Kruk and Harold Reynolds. I'm Karl Ravech."
>> I'm not gonna lie: Jon Garland is certainly a Cy Young candidate at this point. But I don't think he's the best pitcher on his own team. Mark Buehrle's ERA is half a run lower, he strikes out more guys, and he's pitched the most innings in the AL.
Kruk's reasoning is, as is par for the course for him, absolutely terrible. Wins are a poor measure of a pitcher's worth. Obscenely poor. Using wins as the sole metric for the Cy Young Award causes unforgivable travesties.
Also, who cares about what expectations were for Garland going into the season? That should have no bearing on who wins the award. You're wasting everyone's time even talking about that.
Let us never forget: in an argument about who should win the Cy Young Award, John Kruk actually said, "It's not like he has a 6.00 ERA!"
He means this as a joke, but he's still an idiot.
Rivera I also believe is a legitimate Cy Young candidate, although really, the standard for relievers has to be ridiculously, ridiculously high given how few innings they pitch. Bizarrely, I almost agree with Kruk on that point.
Anyone see a problem with this sentence, though?
"He's back throwing like no one else in the league right now, and because of him, they're riding this guy all the way to the postseason once again, and to me, he deserves to win a Cy Young."
The Yankees are currently 3.5 games back in both the AL East and Wild Card races. Not so fast, Reynolds.
The best part about tonight's GMCDC was how upset Ravech clearly was throughout the whole segment. We had many, many readers write in about how he held Joe Morgan's feet to the fire on Sunday's Baseball Tonight. Unfortunately, I missed that episode, but it's really entertaining to watch him struggle to maintain a professional demeanor while dealing with two men he doesn't respect intellectually at all.
Labels: gmc diamond cutters, harold reynolds, john kruk, karl ravech
