FJM has gone dark for the foreseeable future. Sorry folks. We may post once in a while, but it's pretty much over.
You can still e-mail dak,Ken Tremendous,Junior,Matthew Murbles, or Coach.
Even slugger Lance Berkman, one of the hottest hitters in baseball this season, resorted to dropping a bunt single in the eighth inning, with the Astros down by four. It was only the second bunt single of his career and first since 2002.
"That's a good play," Cooper said of Berkman's decision to bunt with the third baseman playing him deep. "That's a baseball player's play. It's a nice job. We need baserunners. If you hit a ball out of a ballpark, I call them rally-killers when you get down like that. We need to keep a rally going, and that was a nice play to me."
If you hit the ball out of the ballpark, scoring a run for your team and getting said team from 5-1 to 5-2, you have done something bad.
That is the position of Cecil Cooper, who has been involved with baseball for like 30 years.
You have done something bad. By hitting a home run.
People.
Please. Do something. I don't know what. Write a letter. Call your local congressman. Take to the streets. Get religious. This shit has to stop.
(Thanks to the one billion people who emailed us about this.)
****EDIT: I Am A Dumb Moron
As many of you pointed out, there was nobody on base when Berky laid down the bunt single, so when I wrote "2-run homer" I was, to coin a phrase, "wrong." I have corrected this.
But: two things:
1. how is it "killing a rally" when there is no one on base? 2. It's still dumb to say a bunt single when you are down 4 is better than a home run when you are losing a baseball game, even though -- as many of you pointed out -- sometimes guys hit better from the stretch, etc. Some of you even broke out Win Expectancy charts and showed me that the difference is not very big, at all, between "runner on, down by four," and "no runners on, down by 3." My issue, though, is that Mr. Cooper seems to be saying that having a baserunner on first is far better than that baserunner already having scored, which is silly.
Thank Your God Of Choice That Jemele Hill Is Not In Charge Of Rigging the NBA
I'm sure when you pack up your bags and go to Official Sports Column-Writing School, the first thing they tell you is "Take a position and really argue it!" From what I've read, a lot of sportswriters are taking this rule of thumb and turning it into "Take a ridiculously, phenomenally imbecilic position and really argue it!"
(Also, as a corollary, should you ever get called out on the resulting column (say, on a sports metacriticism blog), you may claim, utterly disingenuously, "I meant for it to be controversial -- it got the Internet buzzing, didn't it?")
Now hold on one second. No. No, they shouldn't. This is an example, like many many others, of when the conventional wisdom is absolutely, one hundred percent correct. A Lakers-Celtics Finals would further reinvigorate the NBA. It would captivate a national audience like no matchup since perhaps Michael Jordan vs. Anyone. It would draw in lapsed basketball fans with fond memories of Magic and Larry in the 80's. It would feature some of the sport's biggest, most beloved and most reviled stars. Outside of Detroit and San Antonio, I imagine a poll of Americans would run something like 80% "Lakers-Celtics all the way!" to 20% "Get out of my face and stop asking me about basketball, a sport I hate!"
But Jemele Hill is taking a stand. A contrarian stand. A lousy stand. Forgive me, citizens of Easily Entertained, Need-Flash-To-Appreciate Nation for this blasphemous proposal:
Let's root for another edition of Pistons versus Spurs in the NBA Finals!
Note the immediate attack mode: if you do not agree with my ridiculous opinion, you are shallow. You are sheep. You are the Church and I am Martin Luther, here to tear down everything you thought you knew and enjoyed about basketball.
(Trying to block out the sound of 260 million people collectively groaning.)
Correctly groaning. Extremely correctly groaning. I'm hoping that suggestion doesn't make NBA commissioner David Stern lose his lunch. But if Stern could overcome his nausea at the thought of another clash of these underappreciated titans, even he would have to admit that Pistons-Spurs would be the best thing for the NBA.
Here we are with the overreaching again. You can argue that you personally prefer Pistons-Spurs. You can even argue that a fan with a refined basketball palate, a connoisseur of the game who always knows what to order from the basketball sommelier whenever he goes out to a fancy basketball dinner, should prefer Pistons-Spurs.
It's absolutely insupportable that Pistons-Spurs is the best thing for the NBA. Think about how many more kids might get sucked into a Lakers-Celtics Finals. Think of the TV ratings. The news stories. The personalities. My mom might buy a Sasha Vujacic jersey if Lakers-Celtics happens.
Full disclosure: As a Detroiter, I would love to see the Pistons in the Finals for the sixth time in my lifetime.
You don't say.
But this isn't about me. This is about the league's credibility....
The biggest NBA conspiracy theory going right now is that the league is trying to make a Boston-L.A. Finals happen, because it would mean insane television ratings and a return to the time when the dominance of those two franchises overshadowed everything else in sports.
Jemele Hill is arguing that a crushingly boring Finals matchup is better than the possibility of a scintilla of an insinuation that there potentially could be a chance that the NBA is rigged.
If this were any other NBA season, the insinuation that the league was somehow working to orchestrate the return of the Lakers-Celtics rivalry would be considered a real reach -- but not when the Tim Donaghy betting scandal is still looming....
If there are any controversial calls that favor Boston or Los Angeles, or if there are games in which either of those teams makes a ton of trips to the foul line, the CTs (conspiracy theorists) will ask: What would prevent the NBA from urging the officials to call games a certain way to ensure a Finals involving teams from two of the biggest media markets in the country?
There already has been a controversial call -- Fisher mauling Barry at the end of Game 4. The Lakers made it through anyway. Outcry is audible but not deafening. Overall, America is ecstatic (I took a poll (unscientific, sample size=five of my friends, margin of error=0%).
But if it's Pistons-Spurs, the NBA Finals will be conspiracy-free.
And viewer-free. Last year's Finals with the Spurs and Cavs drew the worst ratings in NBA Finals history with a 6.2 average. The second-worst-rated Finals? 2004, Spurs-Nets. Sixth-worst? 2005, Spurs-Pistons. Notice anything?
America hates the goddamn Spurs.
I anticipate the crybabies will complain that the Spurs and Pistons are boring to watch.
Crybabies = America.
But most real basketball and sports fans won't think that way -- just those casual NBA viewers who want it both ways. You know, the ones who deride the NBA for promoting individuals, but whine when Kobe, LeBron or some other one-named superstar isn't in the Finals. The ones who claim they love underdogs, but won't give the Pistons or Spurs a chance.
I wouldn't call myself particularly casual in my NBA viewing. I've watched 43,285.5 of the 43,286 playoff game this year (had to miss half of the Toronto-Orlando games due to massive quadruple-bypass open-heart surgery -- still mad about that). I'm fine with the NBA promoting individuals, and I think the league is better served when its most famous players are playing on its biggest stage.
Common sense, people. Don't let being a sportswriter get in the way of that.
If you're someone who grumbles that NBA players don't play defense,
I'm not.
you should root for Pistons-Spurs
even though Boston may play the best defense of the remaining playoff teams?
(although Boston may play the best defense of the remaining playoff teams).
Exactly.
If you complain you're sick of seeing NBA teams that don't play hard,
I don't.
root for Pistons-Spurs. If you love teams that win because of their commitment to team basketball, root for Pistons-Spurs.
I don't know if this is aimed at Kobe Bryant or what, but the Lakers play some of the most beautiful team-oriented offense I've ever seen. Gasol and Odom are terrific passers for big men, and everyone on the team is unselfish enough to swing the ball to the open man for a clear shot. I'm not sure Tex Winter has ever seen a team execute this pure a version of the triangle, and Tex Winter has been coaching basketball for fourteen centuries.
The Celtics are team-oriented almost to a fault. Apparently, "ubuntu" means whip the ball twenty-five feet behind you to a guy standing on the perimeter even if you're wide-open for a layup.
If you're sick of seeing basketball dominated by And-1 wannabes, root for Pistons-Spurs.
You know what I'm not sick of? Watching Kobe Bryant somehow twist his way past a quintuple-team and gently lay in a double-clutch reverse layup.
Also, watching Kevin Garnett cry tears of joy.
These are two teams loaded with unselfishness -- and they feature players who are among the NBA's best citizens.
Like Rasheed Wallace, America's greatest basketball talent who also may or may not be the homeless guy you pass on the way to work. It could be him. You've never seen them in the same place at once.
When people call Tim Duncan milquetoast, it makes me want to break kneecaps. First, Duncan is a thoughtful quote -- as are most of the Spurs. Second, Duncan shouldn't be penalized because he'd rather frustrate his opponents with precise passing out of double-teams and unstoppable bank shots, rather than trying to make the Top 10 Plays on "SportsCenter."
He's not penalized. He's considered boring -- because passing out of double-teams and shooting 16-foot bank shots are things that look more boring than things that, say, Kobe or Lebron or Chris Paul does.
Besides, unlike the Lakers and Celtics, the Pistons and Spurs didn't get to the conference finals with the help of questionable blockbuster deals. Talk about your NBA conspiracy theories. The Lakers got Pau Gasol for 10 rubles and a John Tesh DVD. And Kevin McHale forked Kevin Garnett over to the franchise he just so happened to win three NBA titles with. Nothing suspicious about that, right?
So are you pro- or anti-conspiracy theory? It seems like you actually believe that the Lakers and Celtics were rigged back into relevance, which I don't really buy. McHale and Wallace seem more inept than diabolically devious.
Seriously, maybe we shouldn't root for outcomes based solely on whether they give conspiracy theorists less ammunition. Is that really how you want to live your life?
The Pistons and the Spurs built their teams the old-school way --
By having their superstar get hurt for a year, improbably winning the lottery, and drafting arguably the greatest power forward of all time. Old school!
Pistons-Spurs -- that's what we all should be dying to see.
Except that anyone who enjoys basketball and wishes to see it continue to succeed in the United States should be rooting extremely hard for the exact opposite of that. Other than that, good job.
SprungOnSports (Long Island): Do you think Willie Randolph should be fired for the Mets' recent failures, or are his players or the GM more at fault?
Once again, SprungOnSports (Long Island) gets there first. That dude is eager.
Joe Morgan: If you're going to fire Willie, you'd have to fire Jim Leyland, John McLaren, Bud Black, and Ned Yost. The list could go on and on. Why is he the one being picked on when so many other teams are playing below their potential. Maybe Willie's point of playing under more scrutiny is a valid one.
John McLaren doesn't seem that great, but Bill Bavasi is the one who put that team together. Jim Leyland won the pennant two years ago and has probably earned at least an ASB-type chance. Maybe Bud Black should go, though he did win 89 games last year. Ned Yost...maybe. That team should be playing better. I don't know. It seems to me that instead of anyone playing the race card, we should look at the obvious facts: the team has a $138m payroll, acquired Johan Santana in the off-season, was PECOTAed to win 93 games this year, and most importantly, had an all-time record collapse last year down the stretch. Any manager of that team -- in NY -- is, as Mike from Paradise Hotel 2 would say, going to be on the boilerplate if his team gets off to a bad start.
Alan (Philly): Joe, have you ever seen a second baseman or any player at that as versatile as Chase Utley?
Mention Cano. Mention Cano. Mention Cano.
Joe Morgan: There have been a lot of really exceptional second basemen around. Robinson Cano has that ability of being versatile. [...]
Robby Cano, or "RoCa" as Jim Kaat has surely tried out calling him at home before he announces games and then decided, "Nah -- AlSo was better," is an excellent baseball player. But Chase Utley has 16 HR this season, and Cano's season high to this point in his career is 19. Just sayin'. He's also 51-60 in steals for his career, and Cano is an abysmal 11-24. I'm not sure what "versatile" means here, but Cano's not in his league for two out of the classic "5 tools."
I think Chase Utley right now is the best of the group, but there are a lot of really good second basemen around.
The only one whose name I know, however, is Robinson Cano.
George,E.L.,Ma.: Hi Joe.Do you think that the Red Sox will make a move with Lugo(trade or release),or stick it out?
Joe Morgan: He seems like he's been playing better.
He has a .684 OPS (not horrendous for a SS, but that's after a pretty good May) and 12 errors in 44 games (horrendous for a SS). He's being paid eleventy million dollars a year through 2010 and is routinely lifted for a defensive replacement in the late innings. You can't release him, you probably can't trade him unless you Renteria it up and pay like $8m/year to some team that needs a 2Bman.
I don't know if you can go find a shortstop at this juncture of the season.
Unless you have a decent prospect, Jed Lowrie, at AAA. (To be fair, I don't know that Lowrie is necessarily a better option at this point. His defense seems iffy. Though he did have an .862 OPS in 40 games at AAA last year. I think you're stuck with Lugo through the year at least.)
There may be someone available at the all-star break.
Lugo for Kouzmanoff straight up?
Being honest with you, Lugo is not hindering the Red Sox right now. It wasn't his fault the Sox got swept by Oakland.
First of all, thank you for your honesty. Second: what a silly thing to say. It's never one person's fault when a team gets swept. Amount of light shed on the Lugo situation by this answer = .0016 candle power.
john (philly): Will Jay Bruce have an immediate impact for the Reds?
Joe Morgan: I think he will. He brings energy to the team, and besides that, he is a pretty good hitter.
I like that the #1 reason he will help his team is: "energy," and the distant #2 reason is: "ability to hit baseballs."
Ross, Chicago: Is Jim Thome done? Any trade value?
Joe Morgan: I never like to think of players as being done. Only the player will know. They said Frank Thomas was done in Toronto and he is doing well in Oakland. We've poured dirt on guys who have come back to play well before, and only Jim Thome knows whether he's finished or not.
Jim Thome is on pace to hit 32 HR and walk 94 times. Something tells me his BA will come up when his BABIP normalizes a little. See how easy it is to answer questions with facts?
SprungOnSports (Long Island): You just saw the White Sox this past weekend, are they for real?
Hey buddy! Welcome back.
Joe Morgan: I don't think there are any great teams are there.
(a) Not the question. (b) Typo makes it sound like drunk Yoda.
the White Sox had been shut down before we got there for two days.Carlos Quentin saved them when I saw them.They can win the division because they have pitching. You will see pitching dominate the league more this year. More teams will struggle to score runs. Teams that have pitching definitely have the advantage.
Honestly, man -- when was that not the case? Teams with pitching have an advantage? When...did that...not...make...blorp...grrrrnllll
Willy (Cincy):Hi Joe. Any thoughts on why junior is struggling as much as he is this year. Can you lose your bat speed that quick?
(raises hand) I know this! Call on me!
Joe Morgan: Part of it is trying to chase 600 home runs.
No! That's not it! Call on me!
I'm just shocked that he has struggled as much as he has, as he still possesses that sweet swing.
(straining; tipping chair-desk combo unit forward toward teacher) Yes...but...just call on me, and I'll--
The player knows whether his bat speed is gone, and if you're worried about your bat speed,
No, he's not worried about his bat speed, there's something else...call on me! Call on me!
you'll start starting your swing too soon and getting out of position.
Guh.
He's 38, is the answer. He's 38 years old. You should have called on me.
Blake (Aberdeen, MD): After 50 games thus far, what do you think of the Orioles 25-25 ? What could the Orioles get for Sherill at the All-Star break?
Time for the KT Odds Report
Odds that Joe says "there are no perfect teams" -- 1 in 4 Odds that Joe says he hasn't seen the Orioles enough to know about how good they are -- 2 in 5 Odds that Joe knows who George Sherrill is: 1 in 12,500 Odds that Joe actually suggests a trade the Orioles might make using George Sherrill at the ASB and names the specific player or players they get back from a specific team, which would fill a need that the Orioles have that Joe has identified: Sorry, a system error occurred. Abort (A), Retry (R), Fail (F)?
Joe Morgan: You have to give them credit for bouncing back. It's too early to start talking about trading or getting rid of people, as you are still trying to build a foundation. I would say, let's wait before we do anything. The Orioles have to be happy at where they are, as everyone thought they would be a disaster.
Just hit F and we'll try again.
Ryan (Bristol, CT): If you were to choose the final AL East standings, what would they look like?
Joe Morgan: Boston would be the only obvious one at the top. The rest of the teams could be interchangeable. But I could go out on a limb and say Boston-Tampa Bay for the top two.
A prediction! Good for you, man. Well done.
MJ (Edmonton): Joe who was the toughest pitcher you ever faced in your career?
Joe Morgan: I faced so many good pitchers, and at any given day, that pitcher could be the best at that moment. Koufax, Gibson, Seaver, Carlton, Ryan--any of them at their best was the toughest.
I really have no beef with this answer. I am 100% sure that facing those five guys -- obviously -- was miserable for even a hitter as great as Joe. But I'd like to add that I love it when a guy gets asked this, and the answer is someone insane. Like, hey, Tony Gwynn (for example), who's the toughest pitcher you ever faced? "Danny Darwin, bar none. Danny Darwin owned me." I love that. I wish that happened more.
That's all. Back to the chat.
Jeff (Norwich, CT): What is up with the Red Sox problems on the road? They have great pitching and hitting. But no one is stepping up on the road! Any explanations?
Joe Morgan: The team is built so well for Fenway. They all know it so well, and Fenway is a great-hitting park to begin with. It's always been that way for the Red Sox--dynamite in Boston, and not so good on the road.
Last year they were 45-36 on the road, which ain't bad. And in 2002, they were far better on the road than at home. Other than that, you're exactly right.
I expect this team to make adjustments. As I've said before, they are the best team in the game.
The Cubs have a better team ERA and a better team OPS. For the record.
Jeff (Cleveland, OH): Joe, how does a team like the Indians break out of an offensive slump? This is a time when team chemstry plays a role? If you were Eric Wedge, other than continuing to say we need to grind it out, what might you do to help a team like Cleveland start hitting?
Joe Morgan: You have to see them on a daily basis to have an answer--are they overly aggressive, are they not aggressive enough, etc.--but when it starts to happen, players take it on themselves to perform better, which puts a lot of pressure on them. There are a lot of different things a manager can do--manufacture runs, put the hit and run on, or many other things.
Put the hit and run on. Bunt. Be stupider. That's the only way to be better.
I would have to see if somebody is pressing, or if it's just one of those cycles the team is going through. The Yankees had one of the worst batting averages with RISP at the beginning of the year and now they're doing better.
Odds that Joe uses the term "regress to the mean": 1 in [my computer blew up. I am now typing on a new computer. I'm still going to hold out hope that he uses the term "regress to the mean" here. Wouldn't that be something? I mean, it's so crazy, it just...might...]
The best team keeps these low points to a minimum. They do indeed have to grind it out, even if it seems like a cliche.
(Sigh.)
MJ (Edmonton): Joe are you for or against instant replay in baseball?
Buckle up, people.
Joe Morgan: I'm against it for the reasons they're talking about it.
...Who? Are there voices in your head, Joe? You need to call a doctor if there are voices in your head telling you to do things.
It's only because of the bad HR calls recently.
The only reason we want to introduce a solution is because of all the problems we've been having.
There are so many other plays that have an impact on whether the game is won or lost.
Probably, though, home runs are at the top of that list, no? As far as single plays that affect games? I mean, you're talking about plays that by definition score at least one run.
It's the same thing with steroids--people only focused on the home run hitters.
I am a relatively smart person. I majored in Knowledge Acquisition at the University of Science. I cannot for the life of me figure out how wanting to institute replay for HR calls is the same thing as people focusing on HR hitters in the steroids scandal. Yes, in both instances people are "only focusing on" something involving home runs. But: "it's the same thing?" Da-wha?
Everyone influences the game, so why are you looking at one area.
I'm sorry...I thought your objection, as noted in last week's chat, was that soon people would insidiously start expanding replay to other areas. Now you are complaining that it only focuses on one area?
I wouldn't want the K-Zone calling balls and strikes. The reason the umpires called these incorrectly was because they were still running when they made the call.
Yeah, dude, we know why they were called incorrectly. They're not introducing replay so the cameras can follow the umps to get video evidence of why they called HR incorrectly. Willie Randolph didn't go running onto the field to argue that the reason Bob Davidson called Delgado's home run foul was not because he has bad eyesight (as Davidson was asserting in this hypothetical and absurd alternate universe) but rather that he got distracted by a low-flying plane. He ran out to argue that the call was incorrect. Get it?
Your eyes are bouncing when you run,
Someone with artistic skills: please draw a picture of an umpire running towards the outfield fence and show his eyes "bouncing" in a comic way. I will put the winning drawing up on this site in a separate post.
so you can't see with the same precision, and you won't always get a correct view.
You know what doesn't bounce when an umpire runs? An instant replay camera, trained on the path of the flying ball, with the ability to zoom.
There has just been an unusual amount of incorrect calls this season.
If only there were a way to prevent such things in the future.
Once you open that replay box, where do you stop?
At home run calls. Or at some other point, if you want more plays to be reviewable. Like the NFL did.
The game would slow down even more than it does now,
I don't think that's true.
and baseball came out with a new set of rules to speed up the game. I'm concerned with dead time.
Then stop doing analysis on live TV. Oooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh snappp! (high-fives no one; is alone in mom's basement)
Igor(Yonkers,NY): Joe, When will the best player of all time, Barry Bonds, be back in uniform and with whom?
Joe Morgan: If I had a team, Barry could play for me.It's pretty obvious to me that there has been some kind of effort to keep him from playing.
No hint, even, of Barry having made his own bed, steroidically speaking. And another wild accusation of collusion from Joe. Frequent readers of this blog will remember similarly unfounded claims being made against the Red Sox for tampering with J.D. Drew in his option year. No evidence is given, because apparently, when you're Joe Morgan, you need not have any.
He hit 28 home runs last year, and there are a lot of less-productive players playing this year. They could use his legal problems as an excuse, but they would not keep him from playing.
dak/Junior and I disagree on this. I can't imagine having that dude on my team. Sorry, everyone. I know he'd OPS like .900, but he'd clog up the metaphorical organizational basepaths with his slowfootedly awful personality and his knee injury of misanthropic distraction. Call me crazy. Call me a hypocrite. That dude doesn't play for my team.
MJ (Edmonton): Joe, which of today's players is the most fun to interview?
Joe Morgan: I enjoy talking to most of the guys.
Gary Sheffield, Robby Cano, Sheffield, Derek Jeter, Sheff, Gary S., Sheffieldio, Top Sheff, Sheffenpopper Incorporated, The Right Honourable Garibaldy von SheffenPfeffer...all of them.
I really enjoy talking to Jim Thome, Albert Pujols, Manny Ramirez, and David Ortiz. But I don't get a chance to interview them like I used to.
Here's a question... Suppose you're the Atlanta Braves, and your left fielders are Matt Diaz (who is out for 4-6 with torn cartridge in his knee), Gregor Blanco, and Greg Norton. If you sign Barry Bonds for the $0 that it would cost... Would you win more games than if you didn't sign him? My answer would be yes.
You're Ryan Howard. You won the Rookie of the Year in 2005. You won the MVP in 2006. You hit 47 home runs and batted in 136 despite missing 18 games last year.
And now, after 196 mediocre at bats, you're cat vomit, according to Gerry Fraley.
Dish: Phillies wise not to meet Howard's demands
Philadelphia Phillies general manager Pat Gillick plans to move on when his contract expires after this season. He will leave his successor, probably assistant GM Ruben Amaro Jr., with a difficult call: Should the Phillies keep first baseman Ryan Howard?
Unless you absolutely can't afford to pay anyone, why are we having this conversation? Throughout his career Ryan Howard has been one of the better hitters in baseball. He's still in his twenties, he gets on base, he hits a home run once every 11.5874126 at bats. That's good stuff. These are the players you want.
Oh wait, no. You're the Phillies. What you want is to pay Adam Eaton $8.125 million.
The safe answer is yes.
"Logic" and "reason" and "numbers" would say yes. But I ask you this: Volvo makes the world's safest cars, and does Volvo use "numbers" to test their cars? No. King Wilhelm VII hand-sculpts each car out of the indigenous Swedish Metal Trees. So you see, sometimes the unsafest choice is the safest.
The bold answer, the one that could do more for the club, is no.
I am fine with this contrarianism if you want to make a rational argument based on MORP or aging curves or some analysis of the current free agent market. That's what, you're going to do, right, Gerry Fraley?
Howard is increasingly becoming a Dave Kingman-esque, one-note player.
Oh boy. Dave Kingman's career OBP was .302. Ryan Howard's is .387. (Kingman's career-high OBP was .343!)
And for those raring to point out that Howard's current slash stats of .209/.316/.469 look like a bad Kingman year, I refer you to Howard's current BABIP, which stands at a shockingly low .252. Howard's career BABIP? .341. So yeah, that batting average is going up. Way up. Because Ryan Howard hits the ball hard and he is a baseball monster who you want to pay to keep on your team unless you're the Pirates or some shit. He began Wednesday's game against the Colorado Rockies tied for fifth in the National League with 14 home runs and tied for seventh with 38 RBIs.
That sounds wonderful. GET THIS ASSHOLE OFF MY TEAM.
But Howard was hitting only .209 with a sickly .785 on-base plus slugging percentage and was on pace for a ridiculous 225 strikeouts, 26 more than his record-setting total of last season.
BABIP. See above. And wow, those strikeouts absolutely killed him last year to the tune of a .392 OBP and the third most home runs in major league baseball.
Ryan Howard is a human-shaped anchor who will drag your team all the way to the bottom of the standings. He has never won a baseball game and never will, until he moves to China, where the fewest runs scored wins the game and the women have sideways vaginas and vertical smiles. But Howard has been going in the wrong direction for more than a year.
He followed up his 2005 rookie-of-the-year performance by hitting .313 with 58 homers and 149 RBIs with a 1.084 OPS in 2006. Then, he dropped to .268 with 47 homers, 136 RBIs and a .976 OPS last season.
A .976 OPS!!! How dare he (multiple interrobangs)?!!??! This was only good enough for 7th in the National League, tied with that other loser, Chase Utley, who I've been meaning to kick off the team as well.
Jimmy Rollins should go. Cole Hamels is dead weight. Give me Pedro Feliz, the ghost of Jim Thome and the corpse of Kris Benson and I'll give you a pennant and a roller-coaster ride of a season!
Howard's chase-everything approach has continued this season. He has been increasingly vulnerable against lefthanders, with 36 strikeouts in his first 84 at-bats against them.
This is a troubling trend. Of course, the possibility exists that Howard is already in the midst of a Hafnerian decline phase, in which case it looks even worse that the Phillies waited until he was like 39 to call him up from Triple A. But Fraley's not talking about denying him a $200 million, 8-year deal. He's saying just cut him loose after this year.
The Phillies are paying $10 million for those strikeouts. With Howard eligible for salary arbitration annually through 2010, that number will continue to rise.
If you can get him year by year until 2010, of course you do it. Of course. I'd sign almost anyone to a one-year deal. I mean, shit, you signed Tom Gordon to a three-year deal worth almost $20 million, and he was a retired 53-year-old jazz saxophonist at the time.
And enough with the "$10 million for those strikeouts" bullshit. Strikeouts are only very very slightly more damaging than regular outs.
If Howard's pattern continues, the Phillies should not continue to meet his price. The next GM will have to make that call. Will he be bold enough to trade Howard and get the offense-choking strikeouts out of the lineup?
If Ryan Howard hits precisely .200 for the rest of the year, sure. But pardon me if I don't have absolute faith in Mr. Fraley's clairvoyance. In fact, in a hypothetical league filled with baseball teams general managed with men like Fraley, I would happily snatch up the following hitters for my team, all of whom finished in the top ten in the major league in strikeouts:
Ryan Howard Adam Dunn Grady Sizemore Dan Uggla B.J. Upton Carlos Pena
The sky would turn black like at the end of 300, except with home run balls instead of arrows. My K-Men would be the most exciting, most infuriating team in baseball. Other teams would start putting infielders in the outfield and outfielders in the first few rows of the crowd. Daisuke Matsuzaka would commit ritualistic seppuku after getting bombed for 14 home runs. Then I would sell the team to Mark Cuban and purchase the lives of the scientists who taught monkeys to control robot arms with their thoughts. Not because I'm angry at them, but because I want them to teach robots to control monkey arms with their thoughts, and then have the monkey-thought-powered robot arms to fight the robot-thought-powered monkey arms.
RetroChat! SprungOnSports (Long Island): Joe, can the Yankees be salvaged and play consistently enough to get back into the playoff hunt?
KT: I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but SprungOnSports (Long Island) is always the first one in the pool and the last to leave at these JoeChats. What gives, SprungOnSports (Long Island)? Why so eager to not have your questions answered?
Joe Morgan: If you take the reputations away of all the All-Star players and the big salaries, and you just look at them objectively, you would not be that impressed.
...Wha? What happened to "Well they're still the Yankees...", which is how you always answer this question? Fremp? Is that you, Fremp?
I think they are in trouble. They will be better with A-Rod back, who carried them through the first month last year, so he may be able to do that again. But you have to be concerned about their starting pitching. I just do not think they can win consistently with the pitching they are throwing out there.
Oh brother. Fremp Controversy II? (Except for the use of "consistently.")
Rob (Baltimore): Joe, is a team playing better baseball than the Cubs right now? Are they now a serious threat to win the WS?
Joe Morgan: Any team that gets into the postseason can win it all, if they get on a hot streak. We have seen it happen plenty of times. There are no great teams anymore. Boston is the best team overall. And I think the Cubs will make the playoffs, so I think they have a chance.
Crisis averted. No great teams. Music to my ears. Fremp-proof evidence.
Terrence (NYC): After this weekend's series, I'm hoping Jose Reyes is starting to take off- not only did it look like he was having fun, but he seemed a little angry as he was doign good things- almost like he's playing with a chip on his shoulder about the media and fan criticism. Do you agree?
Joe Morgan: Well I think that too much blame is put on Reyes when the Mets struggle.Yes, Reyes struggled last season down the stretch, but I think too much pressure is put on him.
I don't know, man. He's the SS and leadoff hitter for the Mets. He hit .205/.279/.333 in 117 September AB last year, and was 5-9 in SB after being 23-26 in August. His team collapsed horribly. He certainly wasn't the only one to stink it up, but when you're the leadoff hitter and SS and you stink it up in September and your team collapses horribly, you're going to take that hit. Hell, David Wright took a hit, too, and he OPSed like a billion. (I haven't checked that specifically, but I'm pretty sure it was like a billion.)
So he should be playing with a chip on his shoulder, with everything that has but put on him, especially last season's collpase. I am a big fan of his and I hope that he continues to play well.
Coddler.
Rich (Sun Valley, ID): Joe, have you ever seen a team leave as many men on base as the Cardinals in the last week?
He has no idea what you're talking about, Rich. He hasn't seen the Cardinals play this year. I guarantee you get nothing specific here.
And when is the last time you saw a team get 18 hits (the Rays) and lose? Thanks-
He has never seen that. He doesn't watch baseball. You get no answer here. KT guarantee.
Joe Morgan: Those things happen; where you get a lot of guys on base, and you do not drive them in, the pressure builds and you get tight. It happens, and it happens as a team. Just like hitting in contagious, so is leaving men on base. I have seen plenty of games where teams just cannot seem to drive ina run.
As Nikki Finke would say: toldja!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jon (Mad-town): Will we ever see a a great/dominant team again? I think the D-backs have something in the works for the next decade.
Joe Morgan: Yeah I think we will see dominant teams again. When scientists build a time machine and we can go back to Cincinnati in 1975, assholes.
Just kidding. He didn't write that second part. But how awesome would it have been if he had?
These things happen in cycles. But it has to be a team that has strengths in all areas of the game.
Hang on...this theoretically "dominant" team has to have strengths in all areas of the game? I don't understand.
I think the D-backs, because they are young and can develop, could be great for a very long period of time.
Name three Diamondbacks. (And Randy Johnson doesn't count, because you'd only be naming him because you remember he was on the team in 2001 and don't know that he's been traded like five times since then.)
Kevin STL: Joe, after that fiasco with Delgado's HR being called back, do you think the need for Instant Replay is upon us? Seems as though you and J Miller already knew the ball was fair before they overrode the call because of the replay.
Joe Morgan: Well I knew it was fair before the replay, because I had a good angle. I dfo not think you can have replays, because you would use it too much.
No you wouldn't, if the league regulated how often you could use it. We're very early in this debate, and we already have our "Why does everyone ignore this basic and simple fact?" thing.
There has been talk on using it for HR in the 8th or 9th inning, but that is not fair because often the winning HRs are hit earlier in the game. Replay would slow the game down more, so I think we will just have to live with the decisions of the umpires.
A few intrepid emailers have pointed out: when a controversial HR is hit, here's what happens. One team argues the call. The manager comes out. The hitter and the manager converge on the ump. The up calls the other umps and they talk for 1-3 minutes. The call is either reversed or upheld. The losing side argues. Often, someone is tossed after 1-3 more minutes of arguing. The game continues.
There is no way a red flag-type review situation could take that much longer than it already does.
I did like how they gathered around and talked about the play. But I did not like how the play was overruled by someone who was not the closest to the play. To overturn something like that you need to be 100% sure.
Hey -- here's a way to make it so that you're 100 sure: watch a replay.
Steiny (NYC): Joe, do you think Barry Bonds will be on a major league baseball team before the end of the season?
Joe Morgan: I have no reason to believe he will, so I will say no. But it is too bad, because the guy hit 28 HRs last season and there are plenty of guys with lesser talent playing on teams right now. It is unfortunate that he has become the poster boy for the steroids era, when it is obvious that hundreds of other guys were doing it as well.
Huh. Good point. Why would it be that Bonds became the poster boy for steroids instead of, you know, like Paxton Crawford or something? Can't think of a reason off-hand. I mean, both he and Paxton Crawford used illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Both Bonds and Paxton Crawford broke the all-time HR record for a season. He and Paxton Crawford both also set the all-time career mark in HR. So that can't be it. And it was Paxton Crawford, actually, I think I remember, who set the all-time record for walks in a season, because he was the most famous and feared hitter in the history of baseball...
I don't know. There's gotta be a reason somewhere.
MJ (Edmonton): Joe, how do players regain their consistency coming back from an injury?
You know what's amazing? Joe has been baited one thousand times by people using "consistency" in the question, and he's never once indicated that this is strange or unusual.
Joe Morgan: The toughest thing about coming back is the first few days you are full of energy and running on pure adrenaline, which makes you play well; [...]
I am going to take this as evidence that Joe Morgan wholeheartedly supports the use of adrenaline-based PEDs.
Joe Morgan: That's all the time I have. We'll chat again next Tuesday.
Joe has been baited one thousand times by people using "consistency" in the question, and he's never once indicated that this is strange or unusual.
Not only that, but out of the presumably hundreds of millions of questions he's getting, he's specifically picking all of the ones with "consistency" in them. Maybe he thinks it's like his "mega-dittoes" or something.
Alright, I'll be the guy who defends Joe Morgan. Nobody's happy about this, but, here goes.
Re: Bonds/'roids. Morgan never said that he didn't understand why Bonds became the poster boy. He just said that it's unfortunate.
And I agree with him. As we've discussed many times -- and feel free to bring up Frat House again if you like -- I think it's unfortunate that steroid users get vilified more than the other cheaters in baseball history. And similarly, I agree with Morgan that it's unfortunate that Bonds gets vilified more than other steroid users. In both cases, I understand why...I (We? Ugh. We.) just think it's not cool.
A little over one month ago, I wrote an elegantly-titled post called "The Big Dead" about Gerry Fraley's obituary for Frank Thomas' baseball-playing abilities.
In his piece, Fraley made the following outlandish, fairly unsubstantiated claims:
The reality, which Thomas does not recognize, is that he represented a hindrance to the club.
Thomas was a deadweight.
Releasing Thomas puts the Blue Jays in position to craft a more suitable lineup. They will be a better club offensively and defensively without him.
And of course: If Thomas expects a deluge of calls from teams eager to add him, he will be disappointed again. The Big Hurt is the last to realize that he is finished.
Frank Thomas did receive a call, almost immediately. In 89 at bats with the Oakland A's, he has hit .315 with 4 HR, 16 RBI, an OPS of .921, and slash stats of .315/.415/.506.
Just as his numbers in Toronto were absolutely bound to go up, I suspect these will go down. But sometimes it's fun to go back just one month and look at what some sportswriters were saying with absolute certainty.
Whatever -- I'm calling it right now: Frank Thomas will win the Triple Crown. Of horse racing. For the next twenty years consecutively.
His jockey will be a Shetland pony adorably outfitted in a pink jockey outfit.
** EDIT **
From the Yahoo! box score, we have the following news:
OAKLAND DESIGNATED HITTER FRANK THOMAS LEFT THE GAME IN THE BOTTOM OF THE FIFTH INNING DUE TO A STRAINED RIGHT QUADRICEP.
This does not affect my prediction. I repeat: this in no way affects my prediction. In fact, what the hell -- tack on a few more Triple Crowns for this guy!
According to Steve Rosenbloom, it's turning fewer runs into more wins. Grinding: what can't it do?
Grind it out: Revisiting Thome-for-Rowand
Sportswriters, just a quick tip -- one way to get on FJM with alacrity is to invoke the 2005 White Sox and how awesome their actually mediocre offense was without mentioning their stellar pitching. Gets me every time. It's like that YouTube clip where a guy in a monster mask pops out of a trash can and then ostensible prankee punches the guy in the face.
I love Jim Thome. I don’t think Aaron Rowand is Superman. But I think that trade killed the White Sox and will continue to kill the Sox for who knows how long.
This is ridiculous for almost too many reasons to list. Reason #1: Thome was way more valuable than Rowand in 2006, the first year after the trade was made. Hit 42 homers, OPSed 1.014. Thome was pretty good in 2007, too, with 35 and .973, though Rowand probably had him beat with his fielding and his surprising year at the plate. Reason #2: Aaron Rowand isn't even playing under the old White Sox contract anymore. He had a player option for 2008, and he damn well took advantage of his crazy, career-best 2007.
Which brings us to Reason #3: If the White Sox needed Aaron Rowand so bad, they could have just signed him back as a free agent before this year. Why did they not do this? Because Brian Sabean and the aging-veteran-loving San Francisco Giants gave him $60 million.
So unless you're saying that Thome's very presence is the reason the White Sox are losing -- oh. Oh God. That's exactly what you're saying, isn't it?
It doesn’t make sense if you compare their careers. Thome is going to the Hall of Fame; Rowand is going to the hospital. But it makes perfect sense if you understand the grinder mentality that Rowand represented, the grinder mentality that the 2005 Sox lineup had, the grinder mentality that existed precisely because Rowand wasn’t Thome.
Because Thome was miles better at hitting. You don't want your players to be too good. Jesus, baseball rule number one, people. This is day one shit. NOT TOO GOOD, that's what ol' Abner Doubleday would say as he went out to his barn, going about his business of not inventing the sport of baseball.
I don't know how many times I can type this into our blog.
2005 White Sox (Rowand-y, grinding, mentally strong): 741 runs (9th in the AL), OPS+ 95 2006 White Sox (infected with Thome, non-grinding, mentally weak because too good at hitting): 868 runs (3rd in the AL), OPS+ 103
And what the hell, one more time for the long-time readers:
2005 White Sox pitching: 3.61 ERA (1st in the AL) Hermanson, Cotts, Politte ERAs: 2.04, 1.94, 2.00.
That's 180+ innings of like, vintage 1999-era Pedro. From Dustin Hermanson, Neal Cotts, and Cliff Politte.
But sure, it was also the grinding.
It existed and worked because those Sox were forced to worry about where their next run was coming from and forced the entire lineup to worry about fundamental, situational hitting.
What these stat geeks don't get about baseball is that it's not about OBP or OPP or DORPy-DORP-DORP, it's about worrying. When your team sucks, you worry, and then the clutch hits just pile up.
This Sox lineup, see, goes the other way by accident, or because it’s over-powered.
** EDIT **
Upon reading this again, it seems like "over-powered" might mean White Sox batters are getting over-powered by opposing pitchers, and thus going the other way unintentionally. So read the next paragraph with a giant grain of salt over your eyes in the shape of reading glasses that transform it into something that makes sense.
** END EDIT **
Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause. Move over, "clogging up the basepaths," you've got a new companion in the four-poster California-king-sized Bed of Baseball Idiocy. "Over-powered." If Steve Rosenbloom's favorite NASCAR car were losing races, he would be the guy taping "wind-blockers" all over the hood, yapping "This car's too fast, I tells ya, too fast!"
The 2008 White Sox aren't failing to score because they lack a grinder mentality. They're 8th in the AL in runs because they're 8th in the AL in OBP, in no small part because Thome, Paul Konerko, and Nick Swisher -- all ordinarily quite valuable hitters -- are off to career-worstish starts. Are you going to accuse these guys of not grinding? Swisher leads the AL in pitches per plate appearance. It's true. I looked it up. Is that not grinderiffic? Thome is 8th in that category, by the way. These three decent-to-great hitters are having concurrent slumps because Thome is old and Konerko is getting old and Swisher -- well, sometimes guys just stink for a couple of months. It happens.
The frustrating thing is that there are valid criticisms to be made about the Thome-Rowand trade. Rowand is seven years younger and he plays a premium defensive position well. Of course, without Rowand's incredible 2007, which I don't think even Pat Gillick would've claimed to have foreseen, Thome still would have been more valuable for the past two years. The White Sox did also have to include top prospect Gio Gonzalez (for whom they later traded again in the Freddy Garcia deal, and then dealt for Swisher), and the Phillies had to throw in $22 million because of Thome's bloated deal.
One criticism that is not valid is: Jim Thome emanates a pheromone that makes his teammates hit worse, while Aaron Rowand, through sheer lack of Thome-power, compels Juan Uribe to get clutch hits. With Thome ahead of Paul Konerko and Jermaine Dye, you have a rerun of the Frank Thomas-Magglio Ordonez-Carlos Lee lineup. Wait for the homer. And wait. And wait. And wait behind teams like the rebuilding Twins. Yeesh.
2004 White Sox (Thomas-Ordonez-Lee, too many homers, too much waiting): 865 runs (3rd in the AL), OPS+ 102 2005 White Sox (Clubhouse constantly freshened by Rowand Magic Grinder Scent): 741 runs (9th in the AL), OPS+ 95
The best reason to say no to instant replay in baseball might seem like the silliest one:
Then you should definitely employ and then defend it.
Who in his right mind wants to see the standard manager-umpire confrontation—the nose-to-nose, spittle-flying, why-did-you-have-to-have-garlic-chicken-for-lunch altercation—become extinct?
In case you don't want to read ahead, let me summarize what's happening here. Rick Morrissey is setting up what we in the brain-having industry call: a false dilemma. Rick Morrissey likes it when managers go toe-to-toe with umpires. Instant replay, he reasons, will be the end of that. So he hates instant replay.
What he bizarrely fails to understand, is that (a) instant replay is being considered only for run-scoring plays (mostly HR) and (b) many manager freakouts happen after slow burns involving several ball-and-strike calls or bad calls at second on phantom double plays or whatever, and so (c) even if instant replay is instituted there will still be hundreds, nay thousands, of situations leading to managers getting angry, ergo (d) instant replay will surely not see the end of the aforementioned toe-to-toe freakouts.
So: this whole article should not have been written.
Who wants to see Ozzie Guillen calmly throw a red flag on to the field signifying his challenge of an umpire's call? I prefer it when he sends a red streak of profanity in the general direction of umpire Joe West.
This is why Ozzie Guillen still has a job. People don't care if he's a good manager. They defend him under the Lloyd McClendon Train Wreck Act of 2001.
You say you would prefer to see the correct call made?
Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes. And I'm not just saying that. Watch:
There. A thousand times "yes." Actually, 1200 -- I threw in an extra 200 yesses to show how serious I am about wanting correct calls to be made in baseball games.
There were three blown HR calls in like 2 days last week. But who cares about the games themselves? Let's get the fans riled up with some good ol' fashioned spittin' in dudes' faces!
I say I would prefer to see Lou Piniella lose it over an ump's human call. That is as uniquely baseball as managers wearing team uniforms.
I've seen Lou Pinella lose it over an ump's human call about 250 times. I get it. He gets all red-faced, he screams and yells, the ump yells back, he gets kicked out, he gives a fiery postgame press conference, he gets suspended, goto 10. It's boring. It's in fact so hacky and well-known at this point that he mocks himself for doing it so much in a commercial for fucking Vitamin Water or something. You would seriously rather continue seeing that than you would see terrible game-affecting calls get reversed? (This question ignores the fact that, again, even if replay is instituted, I guarantee Pinella will get to perform his little ritual just as often.)
For the record, I personally think it's dumb that managers wear uniforms. It looks ridiculous. And if we're going to be all humanistic and nostalgic here, how about going back to these days? I think managers looked way better back then.
The powers that be in baseball say instant replay will be tested in the Arizona Fall League. If it works well there, it will be used during the World Baseball Classic, spring training and major-league games next season.
This seems rational and well-reasoned.
The Tribune's Phil Rogers reports that the technology could be in place for the 2008 postseason but that it's unlikely Major League Baseball would move quickly to introduce something so new to the game.
Again: good work, baseball. Don't rush it. Work out the kinks. Seems good.
Officials insist instant replay would be used only for disputes involving home run calls, but don't believe them for a second.
...Why not?
It eventually will be used for all controversial calls, excluding balls and strikes. If there's one thing we know about technology, it's that it takes over like weeds. Or haven't you seen "2001: A Space Odyssey" yet?
Okay. In football, you only get two a game, right? So what makes you think that MLB is going to use it more than that? The best thing about the NFL replay system is that you have to choose your spots, and there's a penalty if you're wrong. So it has become a legitimate part of the strategery of the sport. It also works.
Grrrrrr...technology! Change! Grrrrrrrrr!
(Also: 2001? From 1968? Not Minority Report, or a George Saunders story, or Battlestar? 2001? It's an excellent movie, but that's your reference point? Still?)
"The times are such that our fans are used to seeing all the high technology, and they're used to seeing the other sports that use these systems to make determinations, and the fans are clamoring for all the sports to look at that," Jimmie Lee Solomon, an MLB vice president, told the Associated Press.
Systems. Determinations. It sounds so poetic, doesn't it?
No, Sarcastic Jones, it sounds rational. Which is how it should sound. There is plenty of poetry in baseball. Getting calls right and monitoring the game correctly should be anti-poetic. It should just be right.
Baseball is different. Automatons do not rule this sport the way they do football. Men who otherwise would be running counterintelligence operations in South America are not running baseball. Anal-retentive people are not yet holding the reins to the national pastime, though they're trying.
Uh oh. My knee is acting up. And you know what that portends: statistics are about to get blamed for everything that is wrong with the game.
As it is, stats freaks are taking over player-personnel departments. The new-breed general managers are slaves to their computers. Couldn't we leave something open to the vagaries of being human?
False dilemma #2. GMs who are into stats rob all of baseball -- and I mean, every last tiny bit of baseball -- of humanity. The game still gets played, guys, whether it's played by Bill Bavasi's free-hacking .280 OBP scrappers or Billy Beane's plodding .370 OBP club-footed fatties. The "vagaries of being human" are on parade in every single baseball game, every at bat, every pitch, every play. If an actual computer assembled the roster, and a second computer (wearing a team uniform, as per MLB rules) managed the team, and the first base coach and third base coach were both ASIMO robots, and the umps were Cylons, and the announcers were fax machines, and the team trainer was a robotic arm with a surgical knife, and the fans were Jar-Jars, the game would still be played by humans.
What's wrong with quirkiness? Why must everything be uniform?
Nothing. It doesn't. But you know what's supernotawesome? When you're a Cardinal fan and Don Denkinger calls Jorge Orta safe at first. Or when you're the Orioles and some little twerp leans over and takes an out away from Tony Tarasco. Or when you're the Red Sox and Chuck Knoblauch misses tagging Jose Offerman by eleven feet and Tim Tschida calls him out.
(Stop writing the emails now, folks. I know none of those teams actually lost its Series because of one play. But it still sucks. And it could be corrected really easily.)
In general, baseball people are earthier than, say, football people, which might explain why Piniella kicked dirt on third-base umpire Mark Wegner during a game last season. After the fact, it was obvious the Cubs manager knew Wegner had made the correct call on the contested play, but he simply wanted to fire up his team, which was performing poorly at the time. How will a manager be able to do that sort of thing if instant replay becomes part of the game? By kicking dirt on the camera?
No. By doing the exact same thing. This whole discussion is moot, since we don't know which situations will be reviewable, but if you don't even think the play was called incorrectly and just want to fire up your team, then go out and fire up your team. And since most likely balls and strikes and maybe even routine safe/out calls won't be reviewable, there will be plenty of opportunities to fire up your team with theatrics and stuff. I'm thinking that you really didn't think this through, Mr. Morrissey. Am I right?
You might be wondering the reason for the sudden urgency over instant replay in baseball. In the last week, TV replays showed that umpires had made incorrect calls on home runs in three games.
Geez. That seems bad. Seems like if all three calls could have been reversed in like 90 combined seconds of looking at a tape, the game would be better off.
Yeah, so? Two of the games involved—surprise!—New York teams. So now it's a hot issue.
Dude. I really don't think this has anything to do with New York. I think it has more to do with the fact that there were three of them in a week. Stop yelling about New York, Chicago. There is no conspiracy to help New York. (There has never been a conspiracy to help New York. The Bulls have now been awarded the #1 overall pick in the NBA lottery twice when having like a .0000004% chance to get it. If anything, there is a conspiracy to help Chicago. But: there is no conspiracy to help Chicago.)
Baseball is better the way it is, warts and all. Sometimes human error is the story. What a boring world this would be if machines decided everything.
Piffle. Insane. Batshit. Balls. Human error is often the story in baseball, and all sports. Human player error. Why let anything besides human error or human excellence on the field decide the outcome? Why? That's lunacy. Plus, even if you correct hugely important calls -- like HR calls -- there is still a human error component on every pitch in the way of strike zone judgment.
If this plan were to take QuesTec and create a LASERTechnoGrid™ on every batter and put a chip in the ball and have the LASERTechnoGrid™ turn red for strikes and green for balls, then yes, I would say, that's silly, and let's let humans be humans. But huge game-altering HR calls? That can be corrected with like a minute's review of normal TV camera work? Why not do that? Why allow massive injustice to alter the fate of these games while we watch and yell at the TVs and the umps have to live with the calls for the rest of their lives? Why?
Speaking of boring, is there anything duller than waiting for an NFL referee to look at a replay from every angle under a hooded camera? If you think baseball is slow now, just wait.
Oh my God am I so much more willing to TiVo through a challenge break than I am to accept a totally crappy call made against my team. So much more.
I know you Cardinals fans would have loved replay during Game 6 of the 1985 World Series. That's when umpire Don Denkinger called Kansas City's Jorge Orta safe on a play at first base even though TV replays clearly showed he was out. The ninth-inning goof gave the Royals new life against St. Louis. They went on to win that game and the next to win the title.
Please somehow say that this was a good learning experience or something for Cardinal fans. Say whatever does not kill you makes you stronger. Please.
But if there had been official replay and Denkinger's call had been overruled, what would Cubs fans have to say during trash-talking sessions with Cardinals fans? Very little. Instant replay shows no mercy for the downtrodden.
That's your argument? It's awesome for fans of a team that had nothing to do with that game? How is that an argument? I know it sucked for Austrians when Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, but how cool was it for Pro-Serb Austrian-hating Hungarians? They got to razz the fuck out of Austria after that.
The umpire is the law, always has been. His word is final. You can argue all you want with him, but you're not going to win. There's something quaint about that,
Quaint. Good for: inns, antique stores, English countryside pastorals, and sometimes courtship rituals. Bad for: high-stakes athletic contests that people care about passionately and which could be easily fixed by a modicum of technology.
something that hearkens back to when baseball was played in a cleared-out cornfield. Back then, managers and players foamed at the mouth in their anger over close calls, but it didn't do any good.
With this logic, why stop at barring technology? Let apes ump. They're sure to get most of the calls wrong, and then everyone can scream and yell throughout the entire game. Apes are like 99% human, DNA-wise, right?
Years from now, we might be looking back fondly on the days when flesh-and-blood umpires roamed the earth.
Or, you short-sighted buffoon, you and your readers might be looking back and saying, "Jesus, if instant replay hadn't been instituted before the 2008 playoffs, Soriano's 7th-game 8th-inning HR would have been called foul and we would never have won our first World Series in 100 years. Thank God for that tiny little change that affected very little and didn't really change the game at all. And how fun was it to watch Pinella go ballistic at the umps before they reviewed it!
We truly live in a Golden Age of Reason," they'll say, before writing another letter to the Trib demanding you be fired.
Ryan from motherfletching Wales drops some Welsh-flavored truth bombs:
It seems to me that there are two essential arguments being made against instant replay. First that it offends the sense of tradition of some people. Second is the fear that while it may initially be used in cases of disputed scoring plays (or possibly just homeruns), umpires will come to rely on it to make calls on other plays, which will slow the game down inordinately. These arguments are very similar to the ones that were raised a few years ago when it was decided that at the highest levels of the game, rugby would use instant replay if the scoring of a try (analogous to a touchdown in American football) was in question.
I play and watch rugby, and if there is one sport more steeped in old-timey traditions that baseball, it is rugby. They didn’t even allow players to get paid until 199fucking5. The argument was ‘the game has always been amateur, so why should we change now?’ This is how set in its ways the game is/was. People watching professional/international games at home started complaining that sometimes the referee made the wrong call with regards to a try being scored. Eventually the governing body realized that it is better to get the calls right than it is to adhere to tradition. The TMO (Television Match Official) was introduced and (some) people thought that soon enough referees would be asking TMO’s about the minutiae of the game. This has not happened, and now rugby fans embrace (or at least accept) the TMO.
Avery isn't from Wales. Avery is from HotLanta. But Avery still makes some good points.
There are 2 other arguments I wish would get more press in favor of the limited use of instant replay you're talking about. 1st - I would be willing to bet that it would actually speed the game up. Right now, after a difficult home run call, the umpires dont make the call and then start the game up instantly for the sake of speedyness - they always huddle up with each other, debate it out, sometimes overrule each other - ive watched games where those huddles seemed to take forever. There is no way that checking a TV to see what actually happened would be slower.
2nd - Isnt there already a 5th umpire at every game, who takes over if one of the starting umpires gets injured? How about we just let that guy sit in front of a TV, and give him a phone to call down and tell the guys on the field what really happened, then (like in college football) everyone can avoid the dreaded "umpire under the hood" which has become synonymous with slowing down the game.
In baseball they dont have a 5th umpire at games in case of injuries. in that case, the umpires go with a 3 man crew and the field umps tend to roam around based on where the baserunners are. If the ump behind the plate goes down, then one of the other umps go back there. Maybe in the playoffs with the RF and LF umps they have an extra one just in case, but in the regular season they dont have "backups.
I am hereby going to suggest that the league use this replay thing as a way to create 15 more umping jobs -- have apprentice umps work the replay booth at each game, as a way to make everything legit, and a way to break in new young umps and get them game experience. Everybody wins! Except Morrissey.
Sorry for the lack of posts, you guys. The insurance industry is not exactly at its zenith right now. On my desk are 3500 pages of subpoenas requesting records that have been long since shredded, and while your humble narrator remains innocent of any wrongdoing, one would guess that several of my compatriots will soon be doing perp walks outside the Partridge, KS town courthouse. Bill Gristleman, Chad Thinson, Emerson Queltz, James Jimson, Hap Gerdle, Avery Klumhauser, Gern Blenston...all my friends. They'll all be gone soon. Oh, Fremulon, we hardly knew ye.
So what's a guy to do? How about: submit to the temptation to be baited by a dumb article entitled "8 Reasons Why Baseball is Lame and Boring" by the pseudonymous "J-Mo." That selfsame pseudonym, as well as the general tone of the article, suggests that the only reason for its existence is to get picked up by angry bloggers like me and drive traffic to the dank, dark, msn/lifestyle/men corner of the worldwideternets.
But screw it. I'm in a fightin' mood.
In just about every U.S. city, if you’re not a fan of baseball, you might as well not be American. Harboring an aversion to the sport is equivalent to burning Old Glory—especially here in Boston, where I live.
This is correct.
What? You don’t know Big Papi’s slugging percentage? That’s an immediate flogging.
It's up to .459, after a very disturbing and PECOTA "Collapse Rate"-style fear-inducing .375 in 96 April AB. .608 in May is more like it. Anyway, yes, I would flog you, if I still lived in Boston.
Tell anyone you’d rather walk along the Charles River than spend an afternoon at Fenway Park? You’re looking at five years in Guantanamo Bay, pal.
That seems extreme. The flogging will suffice.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some kind of a namby-pamby anti-sports guy. Football is a part of my DNA and most of my shirts growing up were the color of blood. But let's face it: Baseball is lame and boring. At the risk of being cuffed and detained by Homeland Security (which, by the way, is why I’m writing this article under a pseudonym), here are eight reasons why.
Before we get going here, let me just say that "boring" is probably the #1 complaint of non-baseball fans about the game of baseball. The standard counter-argument -- and it's a good one -- is that there is much to enjoy about the non-action periods of a game. The positioning of fielders, the psychological drama of pitcher vs. batter, the strategizing, the fact that the defense puts the ball into play on its own schedule, the fact that somehow the game has evolved perfectly so that a runner with just big enough a lead to not get picked off first who starts running exactly when the pitcher goes into a delivery from the stretch will slide into second at almost exactly the moment that the ball can travel from pitcher's hand to catcher's mitt to catcher's hand to second baseman's glove, and so on. If you don't subscribe to this theory, and long for the exactly-as-long-gametime and exactly-as-many-moments-of-actual-action of the NFL, there's probably no way to change your mind. My point is only this: it's very hacky and boring to say that baseball is boring, because anyone who doesn't like baseball is going to say it's boring.
Schedule Can we agree on this? One hundred and sixty two games in a regular season is 142 too many.
You want 20 baseball games a year? Seriously? You want the season to last from April 1 to April 25? You want each team to play each other team once, with like 5 interleague games? You want the May Classic? You want that?
Come on. By the time July rolls around, a game-winning home run or strike out in the bottom of the ninth doesn’t mean squat, except that it’s finally time to go to bed. Knock the schedule down to one game a week and then we might have something to look forward to,
Ah. You want one game a week. Keep the calendar the same, just spread the games out so thin you forget the season's still happening. And knock the revenue down 85%. And make it as hard to see in person as football. Awesome.
Here's the thing, though, J-Mo: the joy of baseball is that the season stretches out over a long period of time, and they play every night. That's what separates the game from other games. Shit's poetic, holmes. Baseball is poetic. It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. (I just came up with that! I am a genius.)
just as long as we don’t have to endure pregame interviews and press conferences all week long. Ugh.
Anyone want to stick up for basketball or football press conferences and postgame interviews as being more interesting than those in baseball? (Clinton Portis excepted.)
And while we're talking about this, anyone want to say that the baseball season is more boring than the NBA playoffs, in which 28 of the 30 teams qualify, and then play best-of-seven series against each other from March to the following February?
Physical Fitness It’s no shocker that you don’t have to be Mr. Universe to play baseball, but some guys look like they’ve been chewing on North Carolina pulled pork in the dugout instead of tobacco.
Brought to you by J-Mo Smokeless Tobacco. J-Mo: It's Less Fattening Than Pork!
Take a look back a few years and it’s even worse.
So...the "problem" you're describing is getting better.
Milwaukee tumors were as commonplace a generation ago as Camaros with T-tops. It’s no wonder steroids are such a problem in the league today. Why work out when all you have to do is shoot up?
Baseball: the only sport where athletes use steroids.
Also, as far as I am concerned, the less-than-chiseled silhouettes of some MLB players is a huge vote in favor of baseball as the People's Game. It has also led to some of the most excellent quotes in sports history, like when Terry Francona, told that Kevin Youkilis's nickname is "The Greek God of Walks," responded, "I've seen him in the shower. He isn't the Greek god of anything."
Fair-Weather Sport Ask any football, soccer, rugby, or lacrosse player what they think about rain delays in baseball and they’ll likely give you an answer we can’t print here.
"Fuckshit!" they'll say, those foulmouthed lax players.
What they’ll imply is that baseball players are a little less manly than other athletes simply because they won’t play in the rain. What’s the worst that could happen?
The game will be impossible to play, and no one will watch it.
Slower pitching? More runs scored? A few extra scratches and bruises? (Boo-hoo.)
It's not a contact sport, dummy. It's a precision sport. You don't perform knee surgery in the rain either.
Stealing second means sliding into left field? Sounds like we have a way to make baseball less lame and boring.
Yes. Play it in the rain. Excellent idea. You know what else would be cool? Opening a petting zoo at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Statistics If I want a lesson in mathematics, I’ll walk through the halls of MIT, not the turnstiles of Yawkey Way. We’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves, aren’t we?
Oh, we're enjoying ourselves, J-Mo. And here's the thing about statistics, which to me seems self-evident, but to pseudonymous blowhards might not: you don't have to use them, if you don't want to.
On-base percentages, opponent on-base plus slugging percentages, sabermetrics … Alan Greenspan might enjoy crunching the numbers, but for those of us who’d rather leave our brains at work, the cold-beverage-intake-to-bladder-outflow ratio makes a whole lot more sense.
Bra. Seriously, bra. Fuck these nerds. For serious. True story, bra -- I'm at the game yesterday. I'm wasted. Seriously, bra, I've had like eleven brews. I'm there with my boy Donnie -- awesome guy. Solid guy. The papers call him the "Laundry Room Rapist." So Donnie's like, "Bra, you want another one?" And I'm like, "Shitchyea, dude! I ain't driving!" And Donnie's all, "Bra, you are driving, remember?" And I was like, "Ohhhh shit!" And we high-five, right?
So basically everything was awesome. We were crushing it, bra. And then, this little fucking nerd in front of us is like, "Can you be careful? You're spilling beer on my daughter's head," and I'm like, "Whatever dude -- it's a ballgame. Shut up and enjoy the ride!" and he's like, "Just try to be more considerate," and then his little nerd son is like, "Daddy, look, Manny's up!" and his nerd dad is like, "Let's go Manny!" and his nerd son is like, "His batting average is down to .288" and that's when I just lost it, bra. Those fucking nerds and their numbers. So I pull my rod out -- you know, because I have to piss, right? -- and the guy is all, "Hey! You can't do that here!" and I'm like, "Sorry, nerdbra, the only statistic I care about is how many brewskis I've had and how much piss I've pissed" and the next thing you know security is dragging me out and they're all like, "You're banned for life" and I'm like, "Bra, what the hell?" and they're like "You pulled your penis out and urinated at your seat and there's vomit on your forearm, and also you can't smoke in the stadium, and your friend is wearing a shirt and shoes but no pants," and I'm like "He's Donald Ducking it, bra -- it's classic!" and they're like, "Get out of here and never come back."
And that's when I realized: nerds have ruined baseball.
Going the Distance If a quarterback can get nearly knocked unconscious multiple times by 300-pound defensive ends for four full quarters, then why shouldn’t a pitcher have to throw a ball 60 feet for a full nine innings—especially if that pitcher is making millions of dollars a year?
...Sorry, do you really want an answer? Okay. Because there aren't 7 other quarterbacks who specialize in 4th quarter passing on an NFL roster. Because baseball isn't really about enduring physical pain, because it, again, is not a contact sport. Because a pitcher has to hurl a ball 90+ mph over and over again into an imaginary box that measures about 500 square inches, and if he spots the ball in about 450 of those square inches it will be launched into outer space by a roided-up monster holding a tree branch and wearing enough protective armor to render moot even his most child-like fear of getting hit with the ball, and the ability to hit those last 50 square inches with the ball he's throwing from 60.5 feet away tends to deteriorate after he's done it 110 times (plus warm-ups), and his ability to do it at all will pretty much fly right out the metaphorical window if someone makes him do it so much that his fucking arm falls off.
Instead he gets pulled before things can go from bad to worse, and fans go nutty when the song they voted for plays over the loudspeakers and their star closer comes out of the bullpen like Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn in Major League.
Topical. Also: how is this a bad thing if it gets fans riled up in a good way? Also: fans tend to love CGs more than even closer entrances. Also: fans don't vote for those songs. They are chosen by the closers. Also: if you ever went to a Padres game in the late 1990s when Trevor Hoffman came in, or to the Stadium when Mariano comes in, or to Houston when Wagner came in, or to Anaheim when Percival came in, or to Boston when Papelbon comes in, and you didn't enjoy yourself, you are a soulless thug.
Don’t even get me started on “The Papelbon.”
Are you talking about this:?
Because that was awesome.
Superstitions Evoke God in public schools, at any bar, or even on national television and you’re likely to be shown the door.
Public schools, maybe, sure, because of that whole thing about not forcing religions on people in America. But bars and TV? It's all God all the time out there, man. In fact, I would go as far as to say, if you're an atheist you're much more likely to be "shown the door" than if you say you love God.
Yet baseball fans collectively acknowledge a higher power that influences their favorite teams and players.
Oh. This is what you were talking about. I thought you were going to say that you're sick of athletes attributing their play to Jesus. I am sick of that, too -- in all sports. But you're talking about stupid superstitions. Ugh. You don't even know where your argument actually lives, here.
A seemingly innocuous trade of a pudgy pitcher in 1920 by the Red Sox to the Yankees? Yup, that was a curse.
The only person who really believes that is this dude, and he doesn't really believe it as much as he used it to sell books. Sentient human beings understand that decades of racism and mismanagement were actually more responsible for the failure of the franchise than ghost stories and nonsense.
Winning two World Series titles in three years? Fate.
Two titles in four years, genius, not three. And not fate: just good teams. Even the most Leigh Montvilled-out poets among us don't attribute the second title to fate. How would that even make sense?
A Red Sox shirt buried in concrete at the new Yankees Stadium? Bad vibes, dig it up!
More like bad press, if you're a new loudmouthed Yankee owner trying to make his mark by screaming as loud as daddy did.
A hawk that recently attacked a teenage girl named Alexandra Rodriguez (A-Rod, as in Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez) at Fenway Park? You guessed it, an omen. And we wonder why the Pope won’t visit our city.
First of all, that was amazing. If you didn't hear about this, here's the story. It's pretty amazing that her name was Alexa Rodriguez, don't you think? I mean, come on -- how can you not love that? (Except that a girl was attacked by a wild animal, and thank goodness she's okay, and all of that.)
Off-Season Shenanigans Baseball is a year-round sport and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Between charity events, trades, management shake-ups, and stadium upgrades, teams and the media make it painfully clear: You will think about baseball 360 days a year—OR ELSE!
First of all, did you intend to give us 5 days off, or are you maybe thinking of a circle? Second of all: for a guy who prefers the NFL to MLB, this is straight-up bonkers. The NFL is the sport with year-round coverage, and their regular season is only four months long. The draft, the minicamps, the free agent signings, the pre-season...the NFL gets 24/7/365 coverage by the media. (And it should, by the way, because people are interested in it.) The baseball season starts on April 1 or so, goes to October 1 or so, then another month for the post-season. Then nobody cares about it until like March, because the NFL is in full swing. (Some people like the Hot Stove season -- myself included -- but the whole world stops when the NFL releases its new schedule.)
But the league occasionally throws us a bone with some quality off-season entertainment like a six-hour Senate hearing. Now that’s excitement!
Fair enough. The congressional stuff is boring. 9/10 of the way through the article, you have managed to make a good point about why baseball isn't that interesting right now, by citing something that has very little to do with the actual game. Good work.
Then there's something about fantasy baseball being boring, which is, itself, boring. And there you have it. 8 reasons why baseball is lame and boring, brought to you by a person who chose to write under a pseudonym that parodies an 8-year-old cultural reference on a website that contains a chunk of url reading: msn.lifestyle.men.
You forgot to further destroy his argument by mentioning that no quarterback actually spends "four full quarters" being attacked by defenders. Even the Superbowl Champion New York Giants had a regular season average time of possession of 31:22. As a stats nerd, I used complicated mathematics to determine that that equals an average of 2.091 quarters, and I'm quite sure that 2.091 < 4.
Also, maybe I am weird, but I would rather watch a 6-hour Senate hearing than a 6-hour Mel Kiper Jr marathon.
"Why work out when all you have to do is shoot up?"
Steroids allow you to work out longer, harder. They don't make muscle just magically appear. They allow you to build more muscle faster, but you still have to work out like a maniac. This is why Barry Bonds hurt his ligaments, etc. after he went on steroids. The drugs masked the pain even as they built up his muscles so that they were too much for his connective tissue. Taking steroids is not the lazy way out, its the unnatural way.
Also, wouldn't steroids make you more fit? I don't understand his argument here.
Since the writer is from Boston, the whole "fans voting for the closer's song" section is right. Last year, one of the radio stations - either WAAF or BCN - let fans vote for Papelbon's song and that's how he wound up with "Shipping Up to Boston."
But all of a sudden here comes Cyndi with a left hook to the face of Matt:
Since the writer is from Boston , the whole "fans voting for the closer's song" section is right. Last year, one of the radio stations - either WAAF or BCN - let fans vote for Papelbon's song and that's how he wound up with "Shipping Up to Boston."
Sorry, but “Matt” is wrong. Dr Charles Steinberg chose “Shipping up to Boston ” back when he was still running all things commercial/promotional for the Sox. They covered it on one of those “hated” post-game shows in NESN.
Plenty of radio stations and newspapers made a big deal out of what Papelbon’s song should be and had fan votes, but none of them actually chose what the song was. The Red Sox chose it themselves.
So it was The Dentist. Interesting. I am going to defend Steinberg on this one -- I'm glad it is region-specific, and not just "Hell's Bells" or something.
I mean, it's mind-boggling. Mike Pizza once hit 40 home runs and OPS+ed 185 as a dude who has to sit in a painful crouch for half of a three-hour game every day. Plus he wasn't a Bondsian-level jerkass, just sort of prickly-blah.
Everyone loves Pizza!
Not Paul Lukas, the guy who usually does Uni Watch, a feature I think I enjoy. Lukas also insists on calling Mike Pizza "Mike Piazza," which I don't really understand.
Good riddance, Mike Piazza
For fuck's sake, calm down.
Now that Mike Piazza has retired, people are already debating whether his Hall of Fame plaque should depict him in a Mets cap or a Dodgers cap.
The answer is clear: Marlins.
If you look at the numbers, it's no contest -- his greatest years were in L.A.
Yeah, he had four or five of his best offensive seasons with the Dodgers, no doubt. But he also four pretty amazing years with the Mets, spent more seasons in New York overall, went to that Subway Series with them in 2000, and held baseball's first "I'm not gay" press conference in New York. So there's something of a contest here, Lukas.
And as a lifelong Mets fan who never warmed up to Piazza, I don't want his enshrinement tied to my team, anyway. Here's why:
The truth comes out. This article isn't about Mike Pizza's Hall of Fame cap at all. I just read the whole thing -- it's actually six numbered bullet points about why Paul Lukas hates Mike Pizza.
Which is fine. It just seems a little disingenuous to Trojan horse the thing inside a "Which HOF cap debate?" question. Just call it "Lukas Loathes..." and put it on your personal blog. Come to think of it, this whole piece doesn't really belong on a major sports media outlet's website, now, does it?
1. When it became apparent that he'd have to move from catcher to first base, Piazza's behavior ranged from disingenuous to manipulative. A classy player would've stepped up and said, "I'll do anything to help the team -- where do you want me to play?"
As Derek Jeter did in 2004, leading to the formation of an unbreakable bond between Jeter and new arrival Alex Rodriguez. Together, these lifelong friends and eventual co-captains would go on to win six consecutive championships, with Rodriguez shattering the record for home runs by a shortstop and becoming the greatest of all time at his position.
A-Rod, ever magnanimous, gave all credit to Jeter: "Derek showed true leadership by shifting to third and allowing me to continue to play at short, where I'm most comfortable. I couldn't have hit all of those clutch ninth-inning home runs without his unwavering support."
Jeter: "He's the king of New York. He eats the pressure for breakfast and asks for seconds. That's why they call him Clutch-Rod."
Rodriguez: "I have a strong feeling there would have been a devastating hurricane in the southeastern United States some time in 2005 if Derek Jeter had not shifted to third base. Just one of those feelings, you know."
What were we talking about again?
But Piazza kept playing dumb, tossing out quotes like, "Well, management hasn't said anything to me about it, so I really don't know."
Oh, right, Pizza. I don't know. Let's say you're the greatest fucking hitting catcher of all time, no one from your team has told you directly that they want you to move to first base, and it's not like the A-Rod of catching has just been traded to your squad. In fact, you yourself are the A-Rod of catching, hitting-wise.
Do you preemptively volunteer to play first?
I'm not fucking moving anywhere 'til I'm told to.
Right, the whole city of New York is talking about it but you have no clue. Sure.
You heard it here first: Paul Lukas expects players to switch positions based on talk radio chatter and Post back page headlines.
When skipper Art Howe eventually mentioned to some reporters that Piazza would be taking some infield practice at first base and the reporters then told Piazza, he acted all offended because Howe didn't tell him beforehand.
It seems like this would kind of piss me off too.
2. One reason he didn't want to play first base was that he was obsessed with that stupid record for most home runs hit by a catcher -- a record that exactly one person in town cared about. Can you guess who that one person was?
The ghost of Mohammed Atta?
(Hint: Rhymes with "Mike Piazza.")
Oh. It was baseball historian and NYU Classics professor Ike Miazza. Figures.
3. Of course, once Piazza finally played first base, we found out the real reason why he'd been avoiding the issue: The guy's a horrible athlete.
So horrible he made over $120 million playing a sport professionally while not being a seven-foot-four acromegalic from Madeupeasterneuropeancountry-ovakia-istan.
Great hitter, yes, but not a good athlete.
Ah yes. David Ho: great AIDS researcher, but not a good scientist.
No coordination, no footwork.
Note to all aspiring high school baseball players: it takes zero coordination and zero footwork to play catcher for a Major League Baseball team for nearly 15 seasons. Catcher: the position played by physical dum-dums!
And it went way beyond his inability to play first base. I defy anyone to find one instance -- one single instance -- of Mike Piazza properly executing a slide into second or third base. Never happened. Why? Get this: MIKE PIAZZA CAN'T SLIDE. It's true. When he tried to slide, he'd spaz out and trip. Really!
And because he couldn't slide, Mike Pizza shouldn't...wear a Mets cap...in the Hall of Fame?
I feel like we've gone off the rails a little bit, people. 4. When the New York Post implied that Piazza was gay, he held that little press conference where he declared his heterosexuality. OK, fine. But he missed a huge opportunity to say, "But what if it was true? What if I was gay? So what? What if one of my teammates is gay? What if one of YOU is gay? It's no big deal. Listen, I'm straight, but this whole thing is really a nonissue." In a city with a huge gay population, that was an opportunity to show some real community leadership, and he totally spit the bit.
Yeah, it would've been cool if he had done that. I bet Mike Pizza is a little homophobic. Or maybe he's really gay. I don't know. But I also bet that a good number of the Mets that Paul Lukas absolutely adores are also a little homophobic. It seems like a professional athlete thing to be.
** EDIT **
Also, as many many many readers have just pointed out to me, Pizza sort of did say the whole thing was a nonissue:
"In this day and age, it's irrelevant," he said. "I don't think it would be a problem at all."
So at least at that press conference, he didn't seem all that homophobic at all. He was a gay-friendly Pizza, like one with basil and Roma tomatoes. (Note: I did not say "with sausage" because it's too phallic, I did not say "with pineapple" because it's too fruity, and I did not say "with clam and garlic" because that's too vagina-y.)
** END EDIT **
5. A few days after Roger Clemens beaned him in 2000, Piazza said that the incident had made him reassess the DH. "I thought the DH could be a good thing for me later in my career," he said, "but now I see that it's bad for baseball, because the pitcher can throw at the batter with no fear of retaliation." So what did he do after leaving the Mets? He shopped himself to American League teams with hopes of becoming a DH. None of them were interested, so he signed with the Padres, but then he went to the A's, where he happily DH'd. Hypocrite.
He said that first thing after he got a damn concussion from one of Clemens' 160-mph torP.E.D.oes. Five years later, you want him to end his career out of the mere principle of sticking to an offhand anti-DH comment to the media after he got hit in the head?
6. "The runner goes, here's the throw from Piazza -- and it comes in on two hops."
He was a bad thrower. He was also the best player on your favorite team for years and years. He slugged .941 in the 2000 NLCS. He hit 40, 38, 36, and 33 home runs from 1999-2002, batting in anywhere from 94 to 124 runs in each of those seasons. And yes, he broke the record for home runs hit by a catcher, which is kind of a big deal if you're the type of person who cares at all about what hat a man wears inside the Baseball Men Hall of People Who Hit and Pitched and Fielded Well.
Was Piazza a tremendous offensive player? Yes. Did I sometimes cheer for him? Yes.
Sometimes?
But he never fulfilled his potential as a star, in the fullest sense of that term. Too bad.
star Pronunciation: \ˈstär\ Function: noun 1 : a player who changes positions as soon as Jesse from Queens calls into Mike and the Mad Dog and asks him to 2 : a player who does not try to hit more home runs than anyone who has played his position ever has in the history of the game 3 : a player who practices sliding, not hitting 4 a : a player who uses his "I'm not gay" press conference as an opportunity to speak out for gay equality, or barring that, b : a gay guy 5 : someone who has never contradicted in action what he or she has once said in words 6 : Yadier Molina, because hey, what an arm!
With the Reds trailing by one run in the ninth inning Saturday, Adam Dunn's initial intention with runners on first and second and one out was to bunt his teammates into scoring position. After two unsuccessful sacrifice attempts, a frustrated Dunn chose to swing away. Dunn's backup plan sailed 449 feet into the right-field Sun Deck for a three-run walk-off home run...
Adam Dunn, batting seventh, with (I believe) 2 sac bunts in his career, asked to bunt in the bottom of the ninth with Paul Bako and the pitcher's spot behind him.
From Derek, pseudo-visual evidence:
And from Matt, horrifying actual visual evidence:
I mean, given the fact that Dusty tried to make Edwin Encarnacion bunt before his big walk-off blast a while ago, maybe this is some kind of strategy. Maybe Dusty takes these guys who have between zero and two sac bunts in their lives, and makes them try to bunt, and when he takes the bunt sign off they are so relieved they launch walk-off homers.
Thank you to the 100+ Reds fans who confirmed this tragic series of events.
The Great Fremp Controversy of 2008 is officially over. This is all Joe.
SprungOnSports (Long Island): What's your take on the starts of the two Florida teams? The Marlins are surprising everyone, and the Rays are playing with surprising consistency.
Joe Morgan: When you have players like Uggla and Hanley Ramirez, those are young players that other young players can look up to.
KT: Because...they're good? Or tall, or something?
Florida also has a quirky ballpark that the Marlins can use to their advantage. The Rays don't have that, but they have played so well so far that it hasn't mattered.
The Marlins' ballpark is currently 17th in runs scored. It is hard to imagine how a team might use this to its advantage, since .990 in runs means it's almost exactly average.
I think the Rays are a very good team that will continue to get better at a faster rate than the Marlins. The Marlins have proven they can put good teams together, even after losing so many good players each year.
The combination of weariness, confusion, and soul-stomping sadness I get when I read things like this means that I am truly listening to this site's namesake. Congratulations everyone.
Matt (Indy): Joe, is the AL still superior to the NL or has the senior circuit finally caught up in terms of talent?
Joe Morgan: Tough question, because you're looking at individuals.I still think the best overall teams are in the AL, when you look at teams like Boston, the Angels, and the Yankees.
Teams with better records than the Yankees in the NL: Florida, Philly, Mets, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Houston, Pittsburgh, Arizona, L.A. [Edit: see comments for a "I'm dumb!" mea culpa here.]
Only Pitt and Milwaukee have worse RS/RA numbers. I know ARod and Posada have been hurt, but just because they're The Yankees doesn't mean they're one of the best teams in baseball right now. Boston hasn't exactly set the world on fire recently either.
They may be superior to the Mets, D-Backs, Cubs, and Cardinals. But overall, it's not a big difference.
There actually is a big difference, friend, between, say, the DBacks and the Yankees. The DBacks are way better. They have a +62 RS/RA over the Yankees. Hey! I have an idea! Look shit up before you answer these questions. Justin (Baltimore): What is your take on the Orioles? They seem to be able to avoid the long losing streaks that have plagued them for years.
Joe Morgan: And therein lies their big problem; will they continue to avoid that long streak? That's always going to be in the back of their mind.
Baseball: 100% mental. 0% how good you are at baseball.
The first time they will start a poor streak, the media will remind them of that fact. I live in the Bay Area, and the writers would always remind the Giants of a "June Swoon".
If the media were more supportive of Barry Zito, he would be 10-0. All the Mariners need to do is read How to Win Friends and Influence People. If I think positively enough, I can talk to animals.
Andy (Chicago, IL): Should Josh Hamilton be at the top of the list of people getting consideration so far for AL MVP? He looks like he could be a triple crown threat and it would be pretty hard to say that another player was more valuable to their team at this point than Hamilton had been.
Joe Morgan: At this point, most of it is a matter of a couple of months. The Rangers aren't leading their division. The MVP has to come from a team that helps his team win.
Because the "V" stands for "VictoryMachine." The M stands for "MostWinsByA." The P stands for "Peace Out, Y'All!"
Jim (Franklin Lakes of the Garden State): Joe, HOF-elect Goose Gossage was reported on ESPN.Com today as saying he disagrees with Joba Chamberlain's display of emotion on the mound. Do you, too, come from Goose's school of thinking? Regards.
Joe Morgan: I think for myself!
Let's try to figure out what just happened.
I think Joe actually got offended, because he thought that Jim from Franklin Lakes of the Garden State was like accusing him of something. He was asked whether he subscribes to the same school of thought as Gossage, and he got very angry, very quickly, because he wants Jim of the Franklin Lakes of New Jersey Metro Area to understand that he, Joe, thinks for himself in all matters. By this logic, no one can every agree with anyone else on any matter, lest he be seen as a "follower." If I say that I think the world would be better off with less murdering, and you ask Joe if he agrees, Joe will say how dare you! That is, technically, yes, he thinks that the world would be better off with less murdering, but only because he had that same thought independent of my thought. This is: a weird waste of time.
The problem I have will all the emotion is that when some guys do certain things, we say they're showing up the other team, but when we deem it to be legitimate emotion, we don't think of it that way. At what point is it showing up a team? If they get mad when a player poses after a home run, why shouldn't a batter get mad when they point or yell after a strikeout.
Someone cogent, meaningful, salient.
How much emotion can you have after getting one or two batters out? I hate to see a pitcher strike a guy out and point or yell, or a batter pose after a home run. Everyone has to decide for themselves where that line is. But I think what Goose is talking about is that the emotion may not be the same every time out, unless it's a one-run game.
Twisted, opaque, gibberish.
Joe Morgan: But again, it's tough to define when you're crossing that line.
And a final flourish of insightless nothingness. Et voila!
Tony (Watertown, SD): Can the Twins keep up their quality play or will they cmoe back down to Earth?
Joe Morgan: anytime you get off to a good start, your confidence level rises. There are no trulyt great teams in the AL, so it's easier to move up the ladder.
No truly great teams?!?!/!!? What about the Yankees?!??!?21231478324872317823uieghf
The Twins got off to a good start, and their young players believe in themselves. The AL Central is wide open. So yes, they can stay in the hunt.
Twins: -3 run differential. Indians: +30. White Sox: +23. So, actually, no, the Twins cannot stay in the hunt, based on current information. Unless they hit and pitch better.
Eric (NYC): Hi Joe. Why has Sheffield been so incosistant this year for the Tigers? Does he need to spend more time playing in the outfield to get his swing back? An excellent JoeBait. Sheffield and Consistency. Well done. Joe Morgan: That's his feeling. I talked to him two weeks ago, and he said to me that he didn't feel part of the game as a DH. He said he felt more in the game when he was with the outfield. That was before he made this move. Now it's time for him to perform as he says he will.
Gary Sheffield: the only MLB player Morgan ever talks to or cares about or knows by name or follows or enjoys watching. Also, I like how it's not even a possibility that the reason he's not playing well is because he's 39 and if you hooked up a wind turbine to his bat you could power all of Detroit for a month off one of his swings.
Jeremy (Pittsburgh): How about those Buccos? I'm sure their little hot streak will end soon, but with Duke and Maholm giving them 4 solid starters it seems like there may be a little cause for hope. Does their new FO have what it takes to make them relevant again?
In case anyone is still wondering whether this is Bill Fremp and not Joe, here's the perfect test. The question is about the Pirates' new Front Office. If this were someone who watches and knows stuff about baseball, like Bill Fremp, he might say something about Neal Huntington, and how he worked for Mark Shapiro in Cleveland, and how maybe experience with that franchise -- which has been very well run for quite a while -- might help in rebuilding the once-proud Pirates, etc. etc. If it is Joe Morgan, and thus he knows absolutely nothing about the Pirates' new Front Office, he might say something like...
Joe Morgan: When you have good starters, you always have a chance. Starting pitching is the most important part of your pitching staff. If they can take you deep into a game, it allows your bullpen to settle. I agree with your assessment--they do have a chance over the long haul to improve as a team.
"...starting pitching is the most important part of your pitching staff." See? Joe.
Andrew (Long Island, NY): Joe- Not sure if you ever experienced this in your career, but how does it feel to be an accomplished veteran player on a team that is "rebuilding?" Do you embrace the chance to help influence the young players' future? Or, do you hope that the team moves you so you can have a chance to win immediately?
Joe Morgan: I was in that situation in Oakland my last year. They had a lot of potential in players like Rickey Henderson. I welcomed the opportunity to try to pass on what I had learned over the years. It just depends on your personality. I relished the opportunity because I had veterans teach me when I was a young player. But I can also understand how some players want to finish out their career in a winning situation. There's two sides to it. I enjoyed trying to help the young players, and I like to think I had an influence with Rickey Henderson. It was fun for me.
Listen. Joe Morgan was a wonderful baseball player. Amazing. Legendary. And I have no doubt that there is a lot he could have taught Rickey Henderson. But they played together in 1984. By 1984 Rickey Henderson had been in the top 10 in MVP voting three times, including coming in second in 1981. He has stolen 100+ bases three times, including his 130 year. I'm sure Rickey learned a thing or two from Joe, but let's not make it seem like a Clemens-Schilling type deal.
SprungOnSports (Long Island): Andruw Jones is batting .170 for the Dodgers with 5 RBI, isn't it time that Joe Torre gave him some time off and played a young guy like Andre Ethier everyday?
Joe Morgan: I say no. You know the upside for guys like Ethier.
Yes you do. .296/.359/.464/.823, which are his career #s. Jones is currently at .176/.283/.288/.571. Last year Unduruw rocked HotLanta to the tune of .222/.311/.413/.724 in 154 games. So, the upside for Ethier = far better than Jones has been since 2006.
Andruw Jones is struggling, but even last year he drove in 90 runs for the Braves and has a superstar's upside.
That is a gooftastic thing to say.
He may need some time off to get his mind right. When you give a guy a day off, it should be a day completely off--no practice, just relaxing and clearing your mind.
Okay. Well. Let's just call this what it is. They're playing him because their bonehead GM gave him $14.1m (including signing bonus) to play baseball this year, and he's the same bonehead GM who gave Juan Pierre $44m to bunt 120 times a year through 2032, and it's too embarrassing to have $23m+ of shitty outfielder sitting on the bench every day, so they have to play him, because at least he can throw.
Kurt (NYC): What are your overall thoughts on the Mets this season?
Joe Morgan: I've been asking myself the same question.
You've been asking yourself what your own thoughts are on the Mets this season?
They can't come up with any consistency.
I would like someone who knows how to do such things to go through every one of Joe's chats since he started chatting and find out how many times he has used the word "consistent" or any of its noun/verb/adj./adv. forms. My guess: the highest number calculable by machines.
They can look like the best or worst team in the majors. That has marked them this year and at the end of last year. Their players are not producing together. I don't know how good they can be, if they can be the team that I picked to win this year. They're an enigma.
Perfect Morganian anti-analysis. I dunno. Something's wrong. "Their players aren't producing together." I don't know how good they can be. Huh. Weird. Geez. Gosh. Heavens to murgatroid. (Shrugs.)
I will now answer this question without looking anything up.
I think the Mets are underperforming because Reyes, Beltran, and Delgado are underperforming, though I think Beltran's OPS is actually pretty good, like low-800's. They're being carried by Ryan Church, which is nice, but probably not the recipe for success that Minaya had in mind. Their starters are fine -- Santana is Santana, and will only get better as he adjusts to the NL parks. Pelfrey and Perez are serviceable-to-good, and Maine is having an excellent year so far. Wagner is still lights-out. So, with a solid pitching staff and a decent pen, you'd expect them to speed up their winning ways over the next few months, because you assume that those good hitters will anti-regress to their means -- if I remember correctly, PECOTA had them at like 92 wins with a +100 run differential.
Delgado might be done, but Reyes and Beltran will heat up. And they'll be fine.
Joe Morgan: I'll get a close-up look at them this Sunday against the Yankees.
I'm sure your analysis will be much more in-depth.
Joe Morgan: I think the fact that most teams have not been consistent
Unreal.
this year is going to be the thing we remember most about the first part of the season, at least until teams start to play better week in and week out.
Once again, I must ask: do you actually watch baseball?
You can't compare the quality of teams in 2 different leagues that don't play (many) games against each other by looking at records and run differential and stuff like that. Think of it this way: my son's Little League team has a much better record (31-2) and run differential (354-6) than the Yankees. That doesn't mean the Deer Park Lindens are a better team than the Bronx Bombers (unless they manage to get Farnsworth into the game).
Fair. I would say, however, that there are several NL teams I'd take over the Yankees, and maybe the Red Sox right now -- that league is better than most people give it credit for being.
Or JoeChat? You decide. (This is last week's -- I'm a week behind. Sorry.)
Jim (Chicago): Do you think the Dodgers' Matt Kemp is the "next Dave Winfield" like scouts have been saying? He may not get as much press as some of the other young hitters in the game but I think he may in fact be the best offensive prospect in baseball. Your thoughts?
Joe Morgan: He's got a lot of ability. If he continues to improve, that's the key. How far he'll go depends on how hard he works and how much he improves.
KT: I'm excited. I'm optimistic. "How far he'll go depends on how much he improves" is exactly the kind of trademark tautological drivel I've come to expect from Mr. Morgan. Let's see if it continues.
Brick (Brooklyn): Predictions on how the AL east will turn out this summer? Are the Yankees a third place team?
Joe Morgan: I felt Boston was the best team at the beginning of the season, and have done well despite some rough stretches. Toronto has good pitching, but they do not have the offense that Boston has. The Yankees, you can never discount them because they are the Yankees. I do think the Yankees may have overestimated their contributions from Hughes and Kennedy.
In the "Is this Fremp or Morgan?" debate, this is a push. It contains a little too much direct-answer-to-the-question to be purely Joe, but there's no actual prediction made, which reeks of Joe. I'm lost now.
Kevin (Memphis): Hey Joe. Thanks for taking my question. Can the Cardinals sustain their success, or will Pujols alone not be enough to carry them to the playoffs?
Joe Morgan: When you have an Albert Pujols, he will make everyone around him better. If you get off to a good start when you were supposed to be a bad team, it builds a lot of confidence. The Cubs look like the best team in that division, but they are not the best team. They can win the division, I think, but the Cubs have to be favored.
Wait a second...Pujols..."confidence"...insane contradiction within a single sentence...nonsensical conclusion...?
Holy crap you guys. Joe's back! Ryan (NYC, NY): Do you think the Tigers can put their start behind them and have a "successful" season?Joe Morgan: I think they can definitely put the poor start behind them. Inconsistency is their problem right now.
Joe Joe Joe Joe Joe!
Even though he's lost a few games, they have to feel good that Verlander is looking good now, but I heard Willis had a setback in his recovery.
Uh oh. Too many specific facts and actual news. Fremp?
I do believe they will have a successful season. Everyone is bunched up there in that division. It's a long season and Detroit will definitely have a chance.
...I'm lost again.
Derek (St. Louis): Hi Joe. I watched the piece you did with Pujols Sunday night. When talking to today's hitters about their approach to the game, what similarities/differences do you find when compared to when you were playing?
Joe Morgan: Pujols is more similar in his approach and the way he talks about the game. The difference is the parks being smaller, the ball is livelier, and the pitching is not as consistent.
You know what's never talked about? In all of the "it was tougher in our day" griping you hear, it never gets mentioned that in the old days starters not only threw their arms off with like 500+ innings a year, but also: no split-finger FB. That pitch wasn't around when Joe played (or, it was when Bruce Sutter started throwing it, but let's say it wasn't around like pre-1976 or something). That's a huge weapon for pitchers, and it didn't exist. People should talk about that more, on their metacritical sports blogs and such.
There are more guys trying to elevate the ball, and more guys trying to dive into the plate as opposed to staying straight away. The approach that we had is not better than the approach today's players have. Some of the parks were bigger, and some were gigantic like the Astrodome. Albert Pujols' approach is simply attacking the ball and doing what he does best. He knows exactly what he's doing every time he steps in the batter's box.
I fell asleep like four separate times during this answer. Can someone just tell me whether it was Joe or Fremp?
Steven (Phx, AZ): How will Scott Kazmir do the rest of this year?
Joe Morgan: It depends on whether he feels like he's healthy.
Not whether he's actually healthy, mind you. Whether he feels like he's healthy.
If you don't feel like you're healthy, he may hold back at times. The first thing to answer is whether he feels 100 percent. That will be the tell-tale sign.
I don't know...that doesn't seem like the best way to figure out if he's going to pitch well...
He'll pitch well if he's actually healthy.
There it is.
Rory(Sacramento): How long until Robinson Cano breaks this slump? I know he will, but it's killing me waiting around for it.
Joe Morgan: I am shocked he's been in it this long, because he's such a fine hitter. Two years ago he came close to winning a batting championship. I'm shocked it's taken this long. But when he comes out, I think he'll hit well--just not up to .340.
I'm only leaving this in because I want to make a prediction: when Gary Sheffield retires, RoCa will be the hitter Joe talks about the most. Every single time his name gets brought up, Joe talks about how he, Joe, predicted that someday he, Cano, would win a batting title, and then he, Cano, almost did. This is the kind of happenstantial fact that can keep Joe talking about a player for 30 years.
"RoCa" is in honor of when the YES guys tried to get people to call Soriano "AlSo," and nobody bit.
Zach Rastall (Marinette, WI): Hi Joe you're awesome. What should the Brew Crew do about there horredous relief pitching?
Joe Morgan: There's not much they can do. They invested a lot of money in Eric Gagne, and if he doesn't work his way out of his problems, it will be a disaster. It hough they should have re-signed Cordero, but they lost him to Cincinnati. They'll have to live with that decision. Very few general managers will admit their mistakes. Gagne can turn it around, but who knows?
Here's the thing, man:
No, actually, here's the things:
They didn't invest a lot of money in Gagne, relatively speaking. It's one year, $10m. Now that's obviously not cheap, especially for an homme who suces as mal as he does, but they can cut him if they want to and next year, it's back to the drawing board (in a good way). Frankie Cordero, on the other hand, got $46m for four years from the dumbass Reds. He is 33 years old as of last Sunday, and he has walked 11 guys in 15 IP this year. The Reds are going to be paying this guy $10.5m when he is 36 and on the shelf with his eleventh TJ surgery. (Yeah -- eleventh. A lot happens to Cordero in the next few years.) And you think the Brewers should have signed him? And you think they're having a hard time living with the decision not to?
Gagne stinks, and he's not their closer anymore. They took a risk on a short-term contract and it didn't pay off. At least it's not a hamstringingly bad 4 year deal for a mediocre 33 year-old.
Logan (Reno, Nevada): I am heading back home to Houston for the summer...I know the astros are light on starting pitching, but if their offense keeps them around 500 do you think they might make a move for a decent SP? I would sure like to see a contender at minute maid this summer.
Joe Morgan: That's always a possibility. Make no mistake, people seem to underestimate the impact of Miguel Tejada.
Fremp is out. I'm calling it. This is all Joe. Q.: The Astros are light on starting pitching. If their offense keeps them at .500, do you think they will make a move for a starting pitcher?A.: Maybe. People underestimate Miguel Tejada.
They had a group of laid-back and quiet players, but Tejada is an energy guy, who helps them from that standpoint.
You know how else he helps them, fonebone? By hitting .340/.375/.532. (Though he's only walked 8 times in like 135 AB, so expect those numbers to go down, and soon...)
They have pitchers who are capable of winning, but add another pitcher or two and they have a much better shot.
Oh, Joe. I've missed you, buddy. Can you name one Astros starting pitcher? No. No, I don't think you can.
Charlotte: Joe: You were such a great hitter. What would you do to help Andruw Jones get back on track. He's just lost up there. And I can't believe he's really this bad.
Joe Morgan: I can't either. I can't believe he's having the problems he's having. I have not seen him play this year, as we haven't done a Dodgers' game and he's never int the highlights, so I couldn't give him any specific advice, but I am shocked at how long this slump has extended.
I am officially a broken record, but: Joe Morgan, the #1 analyst on the #1 baseball network in America -- multiple-time Emmy Award Winner -- has not seen a fucking DODGER GAME this year? Not one Dodger game?
I have a full-time job, and a decently complicated life, and a young child. There is not a single team in the majors I haven't watched play this year. I have watched at least one game of every major league team. You know why? I like baseball. Like checking out a Reds-Cubs game on a sleepy Saturday in late April. Like flipping over to a Giants game and imagine what it must be like to be Brian Sabean watching Barry Zito serving 80 MPH cheese to the NL. I like baseball, so I watch baseball. I just...I don't know how saying things like this doesn't get you fired. I really don't.
Brian (Philly): I know Chase Utley is getting all the MVP love in Philly, but what about Pat Burrell? The guy is tearing it up at the plate!
Joe Morgan: It's great to see him get some love somewhere, because everybody's been down on him. He could be a kind of a late bloomer. [...]
Pat Burrell, 2002 (age 25, 3rd year in the majors): .282/.376/.544. 37 HR, 116 RBI.
Mark (Bangor, PA): Hey Joe, have you picked out anything mechically wrong with Hafner's swing or has he lost his eye or bat speed?
Joe Morgan: I've only done the one Indians game early in the year, where it was cold and not conducive to hitting. [...]
And since I only watch games I am actually announcing, and thus only see one game a week, everyone with a specific question about a specific player that happens not to play for one of the eight teams I have covered so far can go fuck themselves.
Sincerely,
the #1 Booth Analyst on the #1 Most Important Weekly Baseball Broadcast on the WorldWide Leader in Sports,
Joe Morgan
Joe Morgan: I think that it'll be a very interesting summer, because there are teams in the race that we didn't expect to be playing well. Teams like the Diamondbacks have shown what they are made of.
That's it. That's how it ends.
Oh well. At least he's back. Fremp, we hardly knew ye.
We all know Barry Bonds is a bad dude. Does illegal whaling in Japan in the off-season, helps cars hit old ladies crossing the street, has a huge collection of pirated LaserDiscs. Crusty sportswriters -- I'm giving you this one. Not defending Barry's character.
But recently we've had a plethora of "good thing Team X didn't sign Barry!" pieces, culminating in that crazy Tim Kawakami thing that argued that Fred Lewis was better than Bonds. Essentially, these articles all hinge on the same premise: Barry's negative clubhouse presence outweighs what actually does on the field. Sure, they pay lip service to his age, his balky knees, his fielding -- but let's be honest, what they're really saying is that Barry Bonds' confirmed boogeymanness is totally more important than his ability to hit baseballs to Ganymede, Jupiter's sweetest moon.
I present to you Jeff Gordon. Not that one. Is unemployed outfielder Barry Bonds the victim of collusion among Major League Baseball owners?
Well, probably not organized, premeditated, let's-all-get-in-a-dark-smoky-boardroom-and-place-blackballs-into-a-mahogany-box collusion, no. But I'm starting to wonder what the fuck some of these teams are thinking.
Of course not. Only a blithering idiot would believe such nonsense.
For a guy about to spout nonsense, he's pretty harsh on idiots who believe nonsense.
The major leagues are awash with players mentioned in the Mitchell Report. The Cardinals, like many teams, didn’t hesitate to acquire players implicated in steroid and/or HGH investigations.
Okay, but like Larry Bigbie and Glenallen Hill and Nook Logan didn't break the all-time home run record, sullying one of the most hallowed numbers in sports in the process. Bonds has a little bit more stigma attached, no?
Still, the players' association is gathering information on Bonds’ unemployment. It is reviewing how the free-agent marketplace operated after the 2007 season.
We hope their investigators check this corner of cyberspace to get our take. Bonds isn’t in the big leagues because GMs believe his minuses outweigh his pluses in 2008.
Ways To Tell If Someone Is Both Old In Real Life And New To Cyberspace, #435: Uses the term "cyberspace."
Let's keep track of Mr. Gordon's pluses and minuses, and which are baseball-y and which are boogeyman-y.
Can he still hit? Probably. Last year he hit 28 homers in 340 at-bats. He still has a good eye, and lord knows he hasn’t gotten any smaller. He could still bring presence to a batting order.
Plus plus plus! Big plus. You know how many Cardinals hit 28 home runs last year? One. His name was David Eckstein. ("David Eckstein" is what I call Albert Pujols.)
But let’s walk through all the negatives:
* Bonds will turn 44 years old in July. How many other 44-year-old outfielders are flourishing in the big leagues this season?
How many 43-year-old outfielders OPS-ed 1.045 last year? Or .999 the year before, at age 42? * The former Gold Glove outfielder is now a defensive liability, due to his bad wheels.
Yes. He is better suited to be a DH. But weighed against his still-crazy offensive prowess, his bad fielding still might be worth it, Manny-style. Baseball Prospectus has Bonds at -12 and -4 Fielding Runs Above Average the last two years. Man-Ram's been clocking figures like -6, -21, -18, -12, and -13 for years. Big huge boulder of salt with these numbers, as fielding science is far from a reliable game, of course.
* Durability is also a major concern, since Barry played just 126 games last season.
True dat. * His salary expectations are out of whack with his diminished baseball value. At this point in his career, Bonds would put up Chris Duncan power numbers -– maybe a little better, perhaps a little worse. (Duncan had slugging percentages of .589 and .480 the last two seasons. Bonds came in at .545 and .565.)
This is just terrible cherry-picking. Sure, those slugging percentages look similar. But check out their respective OBPs, which is way more important than slugging in the first place:
Plus, if you're so concerned with how many games Bonds is going to play, how about Duncan, who basically needs to be platooned since he has a career .598 OPS against lefties? * Bonds is, by all accounts, a truly horrendous teammate. He has been a disruptive clubhouse presence dating back to his Pirates days.
Boogeyman.
* His unresolved legal issues would create distractions anywhere he went. With Bonds comes a media circus, an army of reporters poking and prodding at his combative and defiant persona.
Boogeyman. * He relishes the villain role, a posture that kills his marketing value. He wouldn’t generate box office buzz for his new team.
Now suddenly we're worried about marketing? Should we mark down Julian Tavarez for looking like a seventh-level cacodaemon? We probably should. Also, don't you think more people would still like to see aging dickhead Barry Bonds hit than, I don't know, Skip Schumaker?
Given all those factors, big league GMs opted to look elsewhere for offensive help: younger free agents, prime-age trade targets or home-grown players.
Especially for teams with horrible DHs, I find this to be inexplicable GMing.
Instead, the Cards relied on home-grown talent (Rick Ankiel, Chris Duncan. Skip Schumaker), bargain signing Ryan Ludwick and Rule 5 addition Brian Barton to man the outfield.
...
Ludwick has built a .675 slugging percentage as a part-time outfielder. Duncan hasn’t found his power stroke yet, but his .385 on-base percentage tells you he has enough patience enough to relocate his swing.
Something tells me Ryan Ludwick isn't going to keep up a 1.185 OPS all year. He has a career .333 OBP, so let's not all start saying he's better than Fred Lewis just yet. These are hungry players who bring energy to the group. They help make the Cards a more dynamic offensive and defensive team.
Skip Schumaker has 5 home runs in 178 major league games. Dynamic!
What would Bonds have done? Hit some homers, probably, but otherwise he would have dragged down the group with his egocentric behavior.
Here's where we get to the core of the matter: people life Jeff Gordon truly believe that the scowls outweigh the homers. Bonds' aura saps slugging points away from Ludwick and Duncan. It makes Aaron Miles flub ground balls. Barry's like a baseball dementor. (See, HatGuy? I can do Harry Potter references too!) Imagine how Bonds would have poisoned the clubhouse, honing in on Pujols and offering advice on how to handle his superstar status. One shudders at the thought of that relationship.
You think...Barry Bonds...would hurt Albert Pujols'...ability to hit baseballs. Me, I don't know, I think it would pretty fucking awesome to see these two guys swap hitting tips. God, that would be amazing.
Jesus, what if Pujols protected Bonds in the lineup or vice-versa? (Note to readers: "protection" is, as far as I understand, a myth.)
The team dealt Scott Rolen to shed his negative clubhouse presence.
And just to prove how nebulous, inconsistent, and scattershot sportswriters are when it comes to gauging "presence," the people in Toronto believed Rolen would have a positive impact on the team's "atmosphere":
"Also, replacing Thomas in the clubhouse with Scott Rolen, who's on track to return mid-May from a spring training finger injury will change the Jays' internal dynamics for the better. Rolen understands how to establish a productive atmosphere."
By moving Rolen and shunning Bonds, the Cards allowed Pujols to become an even stronger leader of his team.
Look at how the less-experienced players feed off him. Look at how Albert feeds off the hustle of all the guys fighting to establish their careers.
Yeah, he really needs Ryan Ludwick to push him. Without him, he was all "Blah, blah blah! 1.102, 1.039, 1.072, 1.106, and shit!" What a layabout!
The Cards’ early success this season underscores the value in assembling the right mix of personalities in addition to the right talent mix. This team isn’t hitting homers yet, but it keeps winning games.
In no small part because their ERA is third in the NL, which they couldn't possibly have done with Barry Bonds in the clubhouse frowning up a storm and repeatedly punching Yadier Molina in the gut, unprovoked.
Would Bonds have furthered their cause this season? Of course not. And that is why he sits home today, playing the role he plays best -- the unloved villain/victim.
The Cards are better off without him. And so is every other team.
Yes, the Mariners are much better off with Jose Vidro and his .546 OPS. OPS? More like OOPS!!!!111!!!ONE11!!!!///
It seems like the Cardinals might be okay in the outfield, so maybe Bonds isn't the best fit for them. But as writers of these pieces always seem to do, Gordon can't help but veer off into "AND NOBODY -- NOBODY -- SHOULD SIGN HIM BECAUSE HE IS TERRIBLE AND EVIL AND VILLAINOUS PURITY OF THE GAME CLUBHOUSE GRUMBLE GRUMBLE MEDIA RABBLE RABBLE CIRCUS!"
Cool. He's a jerk. We get it. Someone should probably sign him, though, because when he plays baseball he's damn good at it.
You know what? I'm going to agree with him here. The argument is all over the map, but if I were a GM, even with a struggling NL team, I'm not sure I sign Bonds. He is old, and even though he OPSed like 3.000 last year, I think he's so poisonous and distraction-y I wouldn't want him on my team. I mean, the Reds aren't going to make the playoffs even with the guy, so why sign him? And if you're a contender, and things are going pretty well...
I don't know. Maybe this is a time when it just isn't worth it.
Sometimes we at FJM Headquarters receive so many emails about one particular article that we have no choice but to put aside our busy work as mild-mannered pension plan monitors and such and just like lay out the article for all to see. Such is the case with this pointless list of the "10 Worst Franchises in Sports," by a nefarious Russian named Dave Golokhov, from the venerable sports reporting media outlet askmen.com. I don't know about you, but I was raised never to trust a Ruskie. This is why.
10. Los Angeles Clippers
...Most of the Clippers' struggles can be traced to [Donald] Sterling. Their .365 franchise winning percentage is the third-worst in the NBA and the Clippers have only had two winning seasons since Sterling bought the team in 1981.
Fair enough. Though they did win 47 game a couple years ago...but yeah, they stink. Almost as bad as the Knicks.
9. Vancouver/Memphis Grizzlies
The Vancouver Grizzlies were embarrassing in Canada and they haven't been much better since the move to Memphis. Vancouver compiled 56 wins throughout its first four seasons — a total that serious contenders top annually — and the team's downfall has been nightmarish draft days...
Okay, well, they kind of stink, too, but they did have three straight winning seasons from '03-04 to '05-06, including 50 wins that first year (though Jerry West is gone, I guess, so maybe that's old news). I don't know. I thought Rudy Gay was a great draft pick for them. Eh. They kind of stink too. But the Knicks definitely stink more. Can't wait to see where the Knicks rank on this list.
8. Atlanta Hawks
The Atlanta Hawks, averaging 28 wins per season between 1999-00 and 2007-08, were the Eastern Conference's whipping boy until the Charlotte Bobcats entered the league. The good news is that the Hawks are chock-full of upside since they've been selecting at the top of virtually every draft over the last decade. On paper, the Hawks have more potential than most teams, but they haven't learned to win or remove themselves from the worst sports franchises list.
Weird inclusion here, since they just stretched the 66-win Celtics to 7 games, and seem to have an awesome collection of young talent in the weak East. That Josh Smith fellow seems awfully good to me. This one is weird -- I would've put the Knicks here. But it's nowhere near as weird as number 7:
7. Minnesota Twins
"Moneyball" is to baseball what frugal is to cheap; it's a creative way of saying, "we're not going to pay for our stars or reward our veterans who have earned their keep."
There are 103 things wrong with this analogy. How many can you spot? Let me get you started: "Moneyball" has nothing to do with the Twins.
Sabermetrics and scientific stats are used to evaluate players and give a better indication of their worth, but teams like the Minnesota Twins use this strategy to kiss their superstars goodbye at the trade deadline or the first day of free agency.
Sometimes. Then they take the draft choices and turn them into young, excellent, cheap players who help them win baseball games at a rate that belies their small-market budget. This is called: being good at baseball management.
The Twins constantly sell proven veterans for prospects and draft picks, but when those youngsters finally develop, they get shipped away to start the cycle again. The Twins incessantly look to the future and winning now is not a priority. Translation: the Twins care more about the dollars than about winning.
Twins win totals, 2002-2006: 94, 90, 92, 83, 96. Four division titles in five years. You're telling me that a team that won four division titles in a five year stretch ending in 2006 is the seventh worst franchise in all of sports?
You know who's a terrible director? Scorsese. Did you see Kundun? Booooo-ring.
Puzzling personnel plays: Trading Johan Santana and failing to re-sign Torii Hunter.
I'm with you, kind of, on Santana, though what were they gonna do? It seems like they were right about not accepting Kennedy and Cabrera from the Yankees...maybe Lester and some other Sox prospects would have been better, but time will tell. As for Toriiii, well, let's look at that signing when the contract is up and see if the Angels got their money's worth. (Spoiler alert: they will have not gotten their money's worth.)
Remember ... 2002: A year removed from a contraction battle, the Minnesota Twins (under first-year manager Ron Gardenhire) make it to the American League Championship Series. With a solid roster and a light payroll, 2002 would have been the perfect season to sacrifice some future players to add some veteran players at the trade deadline and make a serious run. Instead, the Twins entered the playoffs with the youngest roster in the league and never stood a chance in the ALCS after beating fellow cheapskates, the Oakland Athletics, in the first round.
So...you're bashing them for being "cheap" and following a "Moneyball" philosophy, because in 2002, with the 4th lowest payroll in the sport, they got all the way to the fucking ALCS. They were one of the 4 best teams in the league that year. And another one of the best teams was the Oakland A's, about whom the book "Moneyball" was written.
You know who didn't make it as far as the $41m Twins that year? The $132m Yankees, or the $108m Red Sox, or the $105m Rangers, or the $103m DBacks, or the $101m Dodgers. And this means the Twins are a bad franchise?
Congratulations! That is bone-dumb.
#6 is the Bruins. 5 is the Detroit Lions.
4. Tampa Bay Rays
Expansion teams are typically a laughingstock for a few years, but in the Rays' case it's been permanent. In fact, a perennial assumption is that the Rays will finish fifth in their division. The Rays' best finish was in 2004, when they climbed to fourth in the American League East. They have finished fifth every other season and have never won more than 70 games.
More inexplicability here. Have you seen the Rays play? They're kind of awesome. They just locked up Evan Longoria. Shields is awesome. Upton is awesome. Kazmir is awesome when he's not hurt. Crawford is awesome. Obviously they won't come out of the East, but damn, that team is fun to watch. Two years ago you would've had something. Now, this just looks like you haven't done any research. I mean...you haven't even mentioned the Knicks yet.
3. Arizona Cardinals
The Cardinals logo appears next to "loser" in the NFL dictionary. The Cardinals have made just four playoff appearances in 45 years since Bill Bidwill got his hands on the team. Bidwill is known as a cheapo, which explains why the Cardinals are always short on star power and talent. The closest they've come to success was when Cuba Gooding, Jr. as Rod Tidwell, in the movie "Jerry McGuire," wore a Cardinals jersey.
I guess it's hard to argue this when you look at the last like 30 years, but again -- they won 8 games last year and were 7th in the league in points scored. If I were making this list, I would look for teams that are not only currently bad, but have bleak futures. Like the New York Knicks, who I assume will be listed here very shortly.
2. Kansas City Royals
Fine. Sure. They aren't very good. I guess that means the Knicks are #1?
1. Pittsburgh Pirates
Okay. That's fair. They are pretty rough. So, the Knicks are # 1/2?
Hey, you there. Sportswriter. Bet you thought you could write a logically unsound SAT verbal section-style analogy about Moneyball and get away with it. Sorry, buddy. Not when this sports journalism blogger just burned through two Miller Analogies Test prep books this morning (as I do every morning; it's a ritual like having a cup of coffee to me).
"Moneyball" is to baseball what frugal is to cheap;
<buzzer sound FX>
First of all, Moneyball is a book, not really a formal philosophy. But even putting that aside, let's do this in English. Moneyball, loosely speaking, is a general managing strategy that involves exploiting market inefficiencies in the sport of baseball...is to baseball, which is the sport of baseball...as frugal, a euphemism for the word "cheap"...is to cheap, which is the word "cheap."
Wha?
You don't have to have gotten a 600 on your M.A.T. to smell that this analogy is to correctness as Hillary Clinton is to giving up-ness! Wait, did that work? No. It did not, on several levels. (Humor and accuracy, no. Topicality and mordant political commentary, yes!)
"Moneyball" is not a euphemism for "baseball." "Frugal" is not a strategy for winning at the sport of "cheap." The whole thing is so tangled I can't even begin to suggest an alternative.
Oh, what the hell, here are a half dozen, each one at least as accurate as what this guy wrote:
Hey -- I have a question. SportsCenter is the show you watch to get highlights of sporting events, correct?
It's like "the news," but for sports. Where I can find news about what happened in sports.
I'm not wrong about this, right?
Except tonight -- and God knows how long this has been going on, and forgive me if I am late to this party -- there was a segment called The Bud Light FreezeFrame, wherein viewers were given the chance to vote on the "Image of the Week." And then Brian Kenny read -- aloud, so everyone could hear him; like, he didn't try to hide it at all -- various reader comments. One of them was in re: Williams hammering Rondo from Game 7 of the Hawks-Celtics series, and came from jpizzle39 (a commenter name so parodically parodic I couldn't beat it if I tried) and began "What a clothesline!"
I don't want to get all Bissingerian here, but do I need to be exposed to reader comments during SportsCenter?
No, I don't.
The Bud Light FreezeFrame. Every Wednesday on SportsCenter.
Thanks to those of you who pointed out that the foul was Game 7, not Game 4 (I think I was thinking "deciding game" or "4th win" or something). Also, I am aware that the Roman numeral sequence is not real or possible. I was trying to convey frustration with long number sequence. I should have made it longer. If I had written "Vol. MCMDVMXIIVMDCDMMMVVIIIII" everyone would have gotten it.
Times are slow in the sports metacommentary world. In lieu of more journo-evisceration, here are two tidbits about two of our favorite subjects, A-Rod and Juan Pierre.
"As tough and big as he seems, he is real wimpy around doctors or any type of medical situation," Cynthia Rodriguez said. "I was, like, not even having a baby; he was the one. The one nurse had a cold cloth on his head, the other nurse had the blood pressure on his arm and my mother was like rubbing his back -- and he is passed out on a couch.
"And I am there, in the middle of labor, and really, I am not being paid much attention to besides the doctor and a couple of nurses. And he is there, moaning. In between pushing, I am going, 'Honey, are you OK?' And are you breathing? Are you OK?'"
Derek Jeter, of course, regularly attends childbirths for fun and is a licensed obstetrician/gynecologist in twelve states. Delivered two of Mariano's kids -- without fancy medical tools. Just his hands, his calm eyes, his gut, and a shovel.
Second thing: Juan Pierre is reading FJM. Buster Olney explains:
Juan Pierre has always been an old-school free-swinger, someone who hacks first and asks questions later. But in the first five weeks of his season, there has been a dramatic change in Pierre.
"He's picking through pitches," said one talent evaluator. "I think with the competition going on" -- with four Dodgers outfielders competing for three spots -- "he had to re-think a little bit the way he was playing. In the time I've seen him, you can really see him trying to get on base, in a way that's different from in the past. There's a deliberate thought process going on there. His at-bats look different."
That's because they are different, so far. Entering Wednesday's game, Pierre is averaging 3.67 pitches per plate appearances, more than a quarter of a pitch better than the 3.40 pitches per plate appearance he averaged last year, and he is hitting .316, with a .388 on-base percentage. He's never had an on-base percentage of greater than .378.
So you're welcome, Juan, for inspiring you to change your approach and revitalize your career.
Next up: Bill Plaschke turns his back on Juan and accuses him of playing too much like a computer.
In FJM Heaven, every writer complains that high-OBP sluggers clog up the basepaths. In FJM Heaven, every article trumpets David Eckstein as an MVP candidate based on his grit, his heart, and the fact that he sleeps in a child's race car bed. In FJM Heaven, A-Rod is a worthless choker, wins matter more than WHIP, "it's not called the Hall of Very Good," and all bloggers live in their mothers' basements.
And in FJM Heaven, HatGuy writes about food for an entire column, every column.
No more candy cane lane? Say it ain't so, Joe! Yankees manager goes too far by banning goodies in the clubhouse
This is just a delight. I mean, I'm not even going to be an asshole for this one. Okay, maybe a little. If Braveheart
-- topical -- were playing for the Yankees in 2008 instead of the underdog Scottish Nationalists in 1305, he’d have climbed on a table in the Yankees clubhouse and delivered a line that would resonate through time: “You can take my life, but you can’t take my Reese's peanut butter cups!”
All of you readers who e-mail me to add the "food metaphors" label on every single post I write, this post is for you. You are legion, you are persistent, and I appreciate every e-mail.
HatGuy, Jesus...he's not even veiling his gustatory fascination with the aforementioned food metaphors anymore. This baseball column is just straight up about food. Think about that. Also, countdown until he mentions ice cream. 5...4...3... Alas, there is no William Wallace on the Yankees and no plans for Mel Gibson to play the brave rebel who leads the team against manager Joe Girardi, who has imposed a reign of health food on his team.
No Mel Gibson joke? You disappoint me, HatGuy. Hell, "sugar tits" even has a food in it. You definitely could have awkwardly shoehorned a dated, unfunny Gibson reference in there. Next time.
No candy in the clubhouse, Girardi has decreed. And no ice cream.
There it is. For the uninitiated, I refer you to what reader Zac once wrote us:
June 28, 2006, Mike Celizic writes "Sox Fans must boo Pedro heartily," and makes a choppy, hot fudge sundae/whipped cream joke:
"If anything else happens — the fans cheering wildly or the commentators congratulating them for booing boisterously or no one taking notice of the occasion at all...[I'd] be as disappointed as I’d be if I set out to construct a hot fudge sundae and discovered I was out of whipped cream."
July 7, 2006, Mike Celizic writes "Not Time for Yankees to Panic" and makes eerily similar whipped cream reference:
"It’s hard to make panic seem banal, but that’s what the Yankees have accomplished over the years... [blahblah] ...Panic should be saved for special occasions. For the Yankees, a day without panic is like a hot fudge sundae without whipped cream."
Yes, HatGuy -- we keep track of food metaphors and similes you made nearly two years ago. That is the kind of people we are. Food metaphor enthusiasts.
It’s not just at Yankee Stadium, either. By Girardi’s orders, stadiums the Yankees will visit this year have been asked not to provide M&Ms, Dove bars, or any other sweet succulence to his Yankees.
Forget FJM Heaven. This is HatGuy Heaven! The Yankees, food, sweet food, creamy food, chocolate, dessert, Yankee stadium, candy, ice cream, Dove bars (ice cream inside candy)! Instead, Girardi wants granola, nuts and dried fruits for his players to snack on. My guess is there won’t even be salt on the nuts.
d:(
(That's a HatGuy frowny-face.)
It makes you wonder why he doesn’t go all the way and ban apple pie and motherhood.
Because he wants his players not to eat junk food? Multi-million-dollar athletes whose bodies are finely-tuned machines designed to perform extraordinary physical tasks on an everyday basis? Yes, this man is Stalin because he doesn't want his players looking like this:
I understand his motivation — promoting healthy choices in all things. But no chocolate? No nougat and caramel? No Heath bars? Not even a roll of LifeSavers?
How many times do you think HatGuy stopped to eat something while writing this column? Fifteen? Twenty? I'm guessing he ate at least one of each and every food he mentions.
Girardi came to the Yankees with a reputation as something of an extremist, but this is ridiculous. We’re talking about grown men here. We’re talking about a freaking Reese's peanut butter cup.
Well, to be fair, you were the one who brought up the peanut butter cup.
It wasn’t that long ago — within the past 20 years — that baseball clubhouses were among the last refuges from a world that was becoming obsessed with inflicting “healthy” living on everyone — by law if necessary.
Yes, 'twas a fine time. The baseball men would laze about, drunk on molasses moonshine, cheeks puffed with tobacco crabgrass. No coloreds were allowed, and the only women were the Lace Tutu Girls, whose sole purpose was to light your cigar and freshen your martini -- toplessly, of course. Ah, 1988.
Once upon a time, players arriving for work could load up on free chewing and spit tobacco to get the nicotine that kept their engines running.
People say a lot of things about baseball. But one thing I think just doesn't get enough play is that it doesn't have enough mouth cancer.
Next to the tobacco was a rack of gum and candy. Coffee urns dispensed a brew so strong you felt you could slice it and eat it in a sandwich.
Food...metaphor? No. Yes. No, wait. No. Brain twisting...screw it, I'm adding the "food metaphors" label and the "liberal use of 'food metaphors' label" label. You happy, "food metaphors" label crazies? You're welcome.
Out of sight from the public but no less readily available were amphetamines — “greenies” — for those who needed to kick-start their games.
So you're pro-greenies? What? I'm lost.
When their work was done, the tired heroes foraged through a postgame buffet that included at least three items from the all-important grease food group. Coolers harbored all manner of soda pop and enough beer in the players’ favorite brands — Free and Free Lite — to get a fraternity house through rush week.
Yeah. That's partly why I bet a team of modern players would kick these lard-assy gentlemanly layabouts' asses. Just a guess.
Except Wade Boggs. Dude would drink 70 beers on a cross-country flight and still go 3 for 5.
It wasn’t something that the American Heart Association (or your mom) was going to endorse, but when you threw in the magazine collection — heavy on hunting, cars and women who had forgotten to bring their clothing to their photo shoots – it wasn’t surprising that ballplayers liked to get to the park early and stay later than absolutely necessary. Clubhouse life was as good as it got.
HatGuy's new rallying cry: Bring back Car & Driver & Porn & Guns magazine!
And then the health police started getting involved.
I think HatGuy is confused. You can still eat all of these things. Relax. Breathe deeply. Look in your pantry. They're still there. All of them: the Three Musketeers, the Butterfingers, the Snickers, the Milky Way Darks. Now look in your freezer. See the ice cream? Yep, it's still there. Hey, here's an idea: what if you crumbled up some of those candy bars on top of the ice cream? That's good, isn't it?
Now isn't that more fun than writing a column about there being no chocolate in the Yankees' clubhouse? Aw, he fell asleep. The little HatGuy's all tuckered out. Isn't that cute?
The first thing to go was free tobacco for reasons that should be obvious. Then teams started to get more healthy choices in the buffets. In some clubhouses the beer also disappeared.
There were good reasons for all of the decisions. Tobacco can kill you, and so can excesses of grease.
Or chocolate. Or -- gasp -- hot fudge sundaes with whipped cream. It's all fun and games when you're just making metaphors about sundaes, but when those metaphors become reality, it's your arteries that pay.
And if a player were to get drunk in the clubhouse and then get in an accident, the team could face heavy liability.
It’s not as if modern ballplayers are Babe Ruth wannabes who train on hot dogs, beer, cigars and babes. (Well, maybe the babes, but not the other things.) These guys work out year-round and many have nutritionists and trainers at their beck and call.
So they probably don't care that much about not scarfing down Turtles for three hours straight before the game.
Sure, you’ve got your C.C. Sabathias carrying on the weighty tradition of David Wells and other noted gourmands, but for the most part, these guys are as healthy and fit as anyone could ever want to be.
So is it that modern players are all so in shape that it doesn't matter if they eat junk in the clubhouse or that it was more fun back in the old days when all guys did was eat junk in the clubhouse?
Also, not really sure how fit Joba Chamberlain is. Maybe he's like the Kingpin and it's all solid muscle.
A Dove bar or a bag of M&Ms is not going to hurt them, and it just might make them feel better — and therefore perform better.
Oh, I get it. It's neither. It's that Chocolate Makes People Better At Things! You think the chocolate lobby has gotten to HatGuy? Look, we've all been tempted by the money Big Chocolate throws at us, but I've always thought of HatGuy has an incorruptible lone kook-type.
Chocolate can, in fact, be very good for you. Dark chocolate is full of anti-oxidants and contains a chemical that elevates your mood.
Yarrrgggh!!! Corporate synergy -- they wrote chocolate into the storyline!
Right here is probably where HatGuy sticks in some hard scientific evidence proving that chocolate improves your WARP3 -- This is well-known at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where Harry Potter and his posse frequently were ordered to eat lots of chocolate to help them heal after a busy day battling Dementors.
Best part of an already unbelievable gold mine (of gold chocolate coins) of an article.
Chocolate isn’t junk food.
WE GET IT.
Some would argue it’s the best food nature ever contributed to our diet, a food loaded with anti-oxidants and imbued with a mood-elevating substance called theobromine, from which comes cacao’s scientific name — theobroma, the “food of the gods.” Was ever any product of nature more aptly named?
Holy f-ing s. He's really lost it, hasn't he? I'm worried. I'm honestly, no-kidding, 100% worried about Michael Celizic's mental state. Call me, Mike. Well, no. Don't do that. Just write an article about A-Rod faking his injury so he can avoid those high-pressure May at bats so I know everything's all right.
And now, just for the fun of it, I will now list each and every food (including repeats) or other consumptible (I made that word up to mean something you put in your body in a food-like manner) found in the column:
candy cane Reese's peanut butter cups candy ice cream M&Ms Dove bars granola nuts dried fruits salt nuts apple pie chocolate nougat caramel Heath bars LifeSavers candy bar Reese's peanut butter cup chewing and spit tobacco gum candy coffee sandwich greenies buffet grease soda pop beer tobacco beer grease hot dogs beer amino acids vitamins ginseng Dove bar bag of M&Ms chocolate dark chocolate chocolate chocolate best food nature ever contributed to our diet cacao "food of the gods"
We've come so far, baseball writers. You're citing OPS occasionally, you're learning that wins and losses for pitchers aren't all they're cracked up to be, you're even acknowledging the dubious worth of small sample sizes. It makes me proud, like a mama city raccoon watching her baby eat its first piece of leftover Taco Bell. So please, when you're doing the last of these three things, don't merely pay lip service to sample size and then leap to ridiculous conclusions, like Mr. Timothy Kawakami did today: 1. Barry Bonds is not missed, in part because Fred Lewis is a better player than Bonds was at the end of last year. (italics and insanity his)
In the top of the third inning last night, Macedonian superstar Kevin Kouzmanoff hit a home run off of Jamie Moyer. On Friday, May 20, 1927, Babe Ruth struck out against George Ernest "The Bull" Uhle. Kevin Kouzmanoff is a better player than Babe Ruth was during that at bat. (italics and hamhanded hyperbole mine)
EMPHASIS ON: BONDS AT THE END OF LAST YEAR. I’m of course not saying Lewis is better than Bonds at the height of his power/the injections or when Bonds was 27, as Lewis is now.
EMPHASIS ON: BONDS DURING AN ARBITRARY, TINY SMATTERING OF AT BATS THAT I CHERRY-PICKED COMPARED TO FRED LEWIS' HIGH BABIP-FUELED START THAT HE ALMOST CERTAINLY WILL BE UNABLE TO SUSTAIN.
I’m saying that Lewis is a better producer in LF for the Giants at this moment than Bonds would’ve been if he was currently playing LF for the Giants, or any other team, or DH-ing, or whatever.
Fred Lewis is hot as hell right now. He's got a .952 OPS. I'm sure even Kawakami would admit that he's performing a little over his head.
You know what Bonds' OPS was after the month of April last year?
1.349
That is not a typo. You know what Bonds' OPS for the year was?
1.045
It's early, motherfuckers. Nate McLouth has a 1.083 OPS. Let's keep our heads when comparing 27-year-old virtual rookies with the first- or second-greatest hitter of all time, even the hypothetical 349-year-old version of that hitter who would be playing this year.
(And Bonds would’ve only been worse this year, while Lewis is getting better.)
Probably. Though Barreee did increase his OPS from .999 to the aforementioned 1.045 from 2006 to 2007, at the age of 9,528.
Flash back to early August, when Bonds was a good player.
Something happened between early August and late August that made Bonds not a good player anymore? Did he lose an arm in a lathe accident? I feel like Barry Bonds with one arm in a lathe would still OBP in the high .300s. He hit HR No. 756 on Aug. 7, to break the all-time record.
Then he hit a few more, then went into a predictable post-record, pre-indictment lull. But there was still more baseball to played and Bonds knew his career was on the line. After the record-gazing, he still needed a big September to prove he could play at age 43. September should be a good barometer for what Bonds has/had left.
YES LET'S JUDGE THE ENTIRETY OF BARRY BONDS' REMAINING BASEBALL ABILITY ON THE BASIS OF ONE MONTH'S WORTH OF AT BATS, NOT THE REAMS AND REAMS AND REAMS OF DATA, INCLUDING THE SEVERAL MILLION RECORDS HE BROKE AND THE KIA SEPHIA HE CLEAN-AND-JERKED OVER HIS HEAD IN LATE OCTOBER 2007.
Here’s what Bonds did last September: 1 HR in 30 at-bats, 7 hits, (.233 batting average), 6 walks (.361 on-base), 1 double (.367 slug). That’s a .738 OPS, way, way under his alleged-steroid totals and career totals.
Did I say one month's worth of at bats? I'm sorry, I meant two weeks' worth. Tim Kawakami is judging Barry Bonds' current baseball-hitting prowess on 12 games' worth of data.
Through 9 games this year, Fred Lewis had a .388 OPS. That's worse than Alicia Silverstone would hit in the majors! Throw him into a viper pit of pit vipers! Through 10 games, it was .654. That's worse than Jennie Garth would hit in the majors! Drop him off of Mount Everest into the Marianas Trench! Through 11 games, it was .761. Eh, okay. That's about average, I guess. Through 12 games, it was .946. HE IS OUR NEW BASEBALL GOD.
The point is, after each one of these games, Fred Lewis seemed to be an entirely different player. The larger point is, you can't judge players after 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 games. What's frustrating is that Kawakami seems to know this (as we'll see from what he writes later), or seems to think he knows this, and yet he still wrote all of this nonsense about Lewis definitely being better than Bonds.
Here’s what Lewis is doing right now, comfortably settled into the lead-off spot at the end of April:
92 at-bats is better than 30, and Lewis appears to be developing into a productive offensive player. Then again, check out this hotshot:
35/104 15 4 26 1 .337 .926
Yeah. That's Xavier Nady. I just made you get a baseball-rection from Xavier Nady, 29 years old, .777 OPS in 551 career games.
-Lewis has the fifth-best OPS (.952) among regular LFs, ahead of Matt Holliday, Johnny Damon, Jason Bay and Carlos Lee, among others.
-That’s much more than Bonds could’ve logically been expected to produce this season, with or without steroid injections, with or without a federal indictment, with or without clogging up the clubhouse with his karma.
Well, there was that whole 1.349 OPS in April of last year. But more importantly, I think we have a new rival to "clogging up the basepaths." "Clogging up the clubhouse with his karma" -- it's delicious, pungent, and utterly nonsensical. Brian Bocock's karma wants to run free with the antelopes. But oh no, here comes Barry's karma (I picture these karmas looking a little like the creatures from Where The Wild Things Are)! It's fat and it's slow, and it's clogging up the clubhouse! Who cares about his karma's karmic OBP (kOBP) when he can't run the karmic basepaths (in the clubhouse)!
-Lewis obviously might and probably will cool down.
Thank you.
His defense isn’t very good (great play here, bad play there) and I’m not volunteering Lewis for Gold Glove consideration at any point. But Bonds was a sieve out there for the last three years. So Lewis is better in the field, too.
Sure. Not helping your point much that Lewis is a butcher in left field, but I'll give you this.
-I realize these are relatively small sampling sizes–September for Bonds, April for Lewis.
Relatively? Relatively?! This is like a dude telling a girl he just slept with, "I realize that I may be relatively chlamydia-y, but..."
You can't just say "Yes-these-are-small-sample-sizes-moving-on-I'm-using-them-anyway." That's, as Buzz Bissinger would say, fucking glib as shitfuck. You didn't even use an entire month for Bonds. You used 30 at bats. That's a fraction of an eye-blink in Barry Bonds' career. I just looked it up. He has 9847 at bats. Some of those could have been incorporated into your evaluation. More than 30 should have been.
But they’re the most legitimate comparable sample sizes.
Infinite monkeys on infinite MacBooks could not construct a more false sentence. Both players were extremely motivated to do well: Bonds to get another contract, Lewis to stay in the line-up. We’ve seen the results. I’m going with them.
-Therefore: Lewis is better than Bonds, and Lewis is a big reason why the Giants are, so far, out-performing the low expectations.
I'm willing to listen to arguments that a healthy, young, solid-hitting outfielder who plays every day and is far more valuable than Barry in the field might, just might have more value to a team than a gimpy, non-DH-ing Bonds. But what I'm not willing to do is accept 12 games' worth of semi-crappy at bats as ironclad evidence that Markus Winston Barrold Bonds IV is done as a hitter, and that MWBB IV's "karma" is going to "clog" its way to that many losses for whatever team it and he join.
Hey, I looked up Fred Lewis' batting average on balls in play. It's .414. This guy is going to fall off big time. Going out on a limb here, but I'm going to say that I don't think he's actually a better player than Barry Bonds.
