FIRE JOE MORGAN

I will continue to clog up your RSS reader.

Karl Ravech is killing it out there. Take this exchange with Steve Phillips:

SP: Jeff Kent in the walk year of his contract, motivated to put up big numbers. They lacked power last year. They lacked Jason Kent's production -- er, Jeff Kent's production. I think they are a very well balanced team with great pitching.

KR: (skeptical) Is there tangible evidence that in a walk year, players produce better numbers?

SP: I don't think there's any question about it. Motivation -- particularly Jeff Kent. He's always put up huge numbers in that last year.

KR: (Tired, so very tired of all of this even though the year has only just begun. Seriously, he asked this question in a hilariously weary-sounding voice. This question was basically an eight-word-long verbal sigh.) What motivates you, Peter, in the NL West?

Labels: baseball tonight, karl ravech, steve phillips

I hope someone else is watching Baseball Tonight right now, because I want to be sure I'm not experiencing some sort of FJM-wish-fulfillment hallucination.

Your lineup:
Karl Ravech
John Kruk
Harold Reynolds
Steve Phillips

Andy Pettitte's getting lousy run support tonight, and Ravech asks his friends, the baseball experts, how you get run support. My first reaction: that is a bad question, Mr. Ravech, sir, and I believe the correct answer is that you get run support by having a team that is good at scoring runs, plain and simple. That, and being lucky. My second reaction: three men are about to embarrass themselves on national TV. And they do not disappoint.

(GRAPHIC: (I shit you not)
Harold: it's easier to hit with poor starting pitching)

He means poor starting pitching on your own team.

HR: I think a lot of times you see these clubs with great pitchers, and the great pitchers struggle to get runs, I think a lot of times, teams go in there and go, "We're not going to get a whole lot of runs today, you know, with this guy pitching." I think a lot of times when you have poor pitching (he really punches these two words) going, you know you gotta score some runs! (Really emphatic there.) And it becomes a mindset. You change the style of play that you play, you end up trying to bang a little bit more, you do a lot of things differently. I think when you know you have to score runs, it changes your style of offense.

Harold Reynolds must have a Ph.D. in mind-reading from the Sorbonne. It's easier to hit with poor starting pitching? "Easier"??? This is astonishing news. No wonder the Yankees are such good hitters. They're always trying to bang a little more, what with Jaret Wright constantly bumbling on the mound in the other half of the inning. Honestly, guys, who's going to acknowledge that the pitcher isn't responsible for getting his own guys to hit? Oh no, John Kruk is about to talk.

JK: See, I think it's easier to score runs when you have a pitcher on your side who's pitching for you --

As opposed to the embedded spy pitchers.

-- that is a great pitcher, because you know you don't have to score that many. And what it does, is, you know if you go up with a runner on third with less than two outs and you don't bring the run in, you think to yourself, "All right, well, so what? They're not going to score either. We'll have more opportunities."

So Krukie disagrees with Harold, but only because he thinks the exact opposite -- guys perform better for good pitchers! He did it -- he said the only thing that could possibly be dumber than what Harold said!

JK: Problem is, when you have a bad pitcher, and you don't deliver --

KR: (dull monotone) You're dead.

Ravech glassy-eyed, barely functioning.

JK: You know you're done!

(Crosstalk.)

HR: That means you gotta execute all the time!

JK: Not with a great pitcher. You can relax with a great pitcher.

HR: With a bad pitcher, you got to score runs.

This is amazing. You've got two guys arguing, extremely agitated, unbelievably passionate, and they're both wrong. It's like watching two Visigoths argue over whether the earth is square or shaped like the outline of a duck. Will somebody please speak up for reason? For logic? For just plain common sense?

SP: You're both wrong.

Thank you.

Because I don't think it's about the quality of the pitcher, it's about the pitcher and the atmosphere he creates for the team.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

(GRAPHIC:

Steve: pitchers earn their run support)

What the hell? Do you think he really believes this? Does Steve Phillips really think that Freddy Garcia (5.96 RS in 2005) "earned" better run support than Mark Buehrle (4.15) last year? How about David Wells (7.97) and Tim Wakefield (4.79)? The Red Sox hitters gave their all for someone pretty much everyone agrees is a grade-A asshole and phoned it in for a devout Christian who loves his wife and kids? (Note: may not be accurate representation of either man.) Is that what happened?

There's a rhythm and a flow that happens to a team when things are going well. When you're scoring runs, when you're playing well -- pitchers who work too quickly sometimes get their hitters out of a flow; they work too slowly, they get out of the flow. And when you have a star on the mound, sometimes everybody stands around and watches. Roger Clemens shut out nine times last year when he pitched for the Astros -- shut out seventeen times. I just think it's about the environment that the pitcher creates!

Oh, that's why Johan Santana got the best run support of anyone on the Twins last year. Because he's not a star.

HR: You're not watching when you're hitting! He ain't pitching against you!

SP: It's about the environment that the pitcher creates.

KR: (incredulous) You believe that? (dripping with sarcasm) They're so enamored with Clemens, they're just -- they can't do anything?

To be fair, Karl, you brought this up. Or maybe this was a bad producer's idea.

SP: I think they watch on days he pitches.

JK: (outraged) If that's the case, then the Houston Astros -- apologies to them -- they are the dumbest hitters in the world. If they're watching their pitcher and not concentrating on scoring runs, they're the dumbest team in the baseball [sic] and I don't believe they are.

But, but -- you just said guys hit better for good pitchers ... meaning they hit worse for bad pitchers. Why is that any less crazy? Steve is talking about environment or flow or rhythm or whatever bullshit he just came up with off the top of his head, but you're clearly just guessing when you say guys are more "relaxed" when good pitchers are on the mound.

KR: (incredibly sorry he brought the whole thing up)

I guess I'll keep watching this good show about baseball!

Labels: baseball tonight, harold reynolds, john kruk, karl ravech, steve phillips

High, high comedy tonight on Sportcenter's GMC Diamond Cutters.

Your cast:
Karl Ravech (KR), put-upon host, forced to deal with two former athlete co-workers who do their best to avoid research as well as logic and reason.
John Kruk (JK), fat load, weirdly proud of being consistently wrong.
Harold Reynolds (HR), somehow disdainful of Kruk despite being wrong almost as often.

First, a totally unedited, comment-free (with the exception of descriptions of tone of voice) transcript so you can enjoy the natural ebb and flow of GMC Diamond Cutters. The topic: your pick for AL Cy Young winner.

KR: "The way you always do everything ... Whoever's got the most wins -- that's the guy."

JK: "Why change? I'm consistent, Karl. I'm taking Jon Garland of the Chicago White Sox. He's got 16 wins! His ERA's not horrendous. It's not like he has a 6.00 ERA -- this guy can pitch! And who thought coming into the season that you would be talking about him for a Cy Young anything? I mean, we thought he was going to be their fifth starter. Now, he's their number two starter behind Mark Buehrle, probably should be their number one. But this guy -- there has to be something said for pitching on a winning team and having the the most wins.

KR: "But if Buehrle ends up with more wins than Garland --"

JK: "Then Buehrle wins!"

HR: (sarcastically) "I'm picking the best pitcher. He's got 30 straight saves. He blew two in the beginning of the year against the Boston Red Sox. I'm talking about Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees. His stuff is electric. He's back throwing like no one else in the league right now, and because of him, they're riding this guy all the way to the postseason once again, and to me, he deserves to win a Cy Young."

KR: "Would you ever consider a closer like Gagne a couple years ago?"

JK: "No."

KR: (very dismissively) "No, 'cause they don't win."

JK: "No, because they don't --"

KR: "He's on a winning team, he does answer that."

JK: "Because they don't start. Starters should win the award. They have an award for relievers."

KR: (pauses, then, visibly upset) "Rolaids."

JK: "That's right. I need one."

KR: (embarrassed) "John Kruk and Harold Reynolds. I'm Karl Ravech."

>> I'm not gonna lie: Jon Garland is certainly a Cy Young candidate at this point. But I don't think he's the best pitcher on his own team. Mark Buehrle's ERA is half a run lower, he strikes out more guys, and he's pitched the most innings in the AL.

Kruk's reasoning is, as is par for the course for him, absolutely terrible. Wins are a poor measure of a pitcher's worth. Obscenely poor. Using wins as the sole metric for the Cy Young Award causes unforgivable travesties.

Also, who cares about what expectations were for Garland going into the season? That should have no bearing on who wins the award. You're wasting everyone's time even talking about that.

Let us never forget: in an argument about who should win the Cy Young Award, John Kruk actually said, "It's not like he has a 6.00 ERA!"

He means this as a joke, but he's still an idiot.

Rivera I also believe is a legitimate Cy Young candidate, although really, the standard for relievers has to be ridiculously, ridiculously high given how few innings they pitch. Bizarrely, I almost agree with Kruk on that point.

Anyone see a problem with this sentence, though?

"He's back throwing like no one else in the league right now, and because of him, they're riding this guy all the way to the postseason once again, and to me, he deserves to win a Cy Young."

The Yankees are currently 3.5 games back in both the AL East and Wild Card races. Not so fast, Reynolds.

The best part about tonight's GMCDC was how upset Ravech clearly was throughout the whole segment. We had many, many readers write in about how he held Joe Morgan's feet to the fire on Sunday's Baseball Tonight. Unfortunately, I missed that episode, but it's really entertaining to watch him struggle to maintain a professional demeanor while dealing with two men he doesn't respect intellectually at all.

Labels: gmc diamond cutters, harold reynolds, john kruk, karl ravech