Heyman's Follies

We know Jon Heyman. Mr. VORPsucks. Mr. if-your-team-ain't-in-a-playoff-race-you-ain't-worth-talkin-about-,-son. Mr. Jimmy-Rollins-is-the-best-thing-ever.

Rollins may not be MVP, but he leads NL in fun factor

Of course. Nothing more fun than Jimmy Rollins. I love how he bashes VORP for being a made-up stat, but then he invents awesome ones that are meaningful like Fun Factor (FF).

Your NL leaders, up to the minute in FF.

1) Jimmy Rollins: 76.3
2) Ryan Braun: 74.9 (he's soooo close!)
3) Mike Lamb: 69.1 (I know, I'm shocked too)
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121) Hanley Ramirez: 22.5 (OK at baseball, but his team is bad!)
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400) Barry Bonds: -43.1

So....story checks out.

The National League MVP race is still up for grabs -- I have Prince Fielder, David Wright, Jimmy Rollins and Matt Holliday leading a group of perhaps 10 -- but I will hand out a somewhat less-known honor here now.

Heyman's made his stance before that MVPs must be on contending teams. The Rockies are definitely not a contending team right now (sorry Larry). So why is Matt Holliday here while Miguel Cabrera and Hanley Ramirez are absent? Of course, there's a simple answer to that. I mean, if those two were truly good players, the Marlins would probably be good. Or if the Marlins were good, those two would be worse somehow because of all the pressure. Whatever, we've been over this. Back to the crap.

All I demand to know is exactly which player is "analyst" Jon Heyman's favorite, anyway.

By far my Favorite Player of the Year (FPY) has to be Rollins, the tiny Phillies shortstop who talks big and plays even bigger.

You heard it here first.

Jimmy Rollins: 5'8", 175 lbs
Jimmy Rollins' Talking: 6'3", 230 lbs
Jimmy Rollins' Playing: 7'2", 322 lbs

If this isn't the definition of little man, big attitude, bigger performance, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know what is.

Before we get into this, though, I acknowledge that Rollins was a very good, healthy player on a team full of injuries. Credit is due.

One of the biggest reasons the Phillies are right there is one of the smallest guys in the league. As I interviewed Rollins at Shea Stadium on Sunday, I thought that he could just as easily be working a few miles to the east at Belmont Park. He is that tiny.

Big reasons, small guys, Philadelphia Phillies.

I have to keep reminding myself that Jimmy Rollins is actually pretty good at baseball despite Heyman's constant efforts to tweak my brain into thinking he's the black David Eckstein.

Heyman, the average height for human males is 5'9". Rollins is 5'8". He isn't tiny. Small for a baseball player, yes. Huge for a jockey: also yes.

Yet the last thing he'd want is to be graded on a curve, to say his team is handicapped by its pain, and Rollins by his stature. No one -- no matter how big or small - has come up bigger than him this season.

This is completely and totally false.

He has 27 home runs,

...making him T-26th in MLB and T-19th in the NL

85 RBIs,

...making him T-47th in MLB and 26th in the NL in this stupid, team-dependent stat.

127 runs

Because Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Pat Burrell hit behind him.

and 36 stolen bases.

Yeah, he's pretty fast, and doing well in this overrated category.

Eventually we get to re: Hanley Ramirez (Miguel Cabrera is never mentioned).

Here's my take: Rollins may be my favorite player at the moment, but as regular readers of this column know, I don't believe a player can truly be "most valuable'' if his great individual numbers don't lead to winning (as is the case with Ramirez), contention and preferably the playoffs.

Yeah, fuck you, Hanley, and your 10.0 WARP3. That doesn't lead to winning. If you're so good, why isn't the goodness of your bat and the energy of your speed psychically or otherwise transferred into the bodies of Scott Olsen, Dontrelle Willis, Sergio Mitre, Rick Vanden Hurk, Wes Obermueller, and Byung-Hyun Kim so that they aren't one of the worst fucking groups of men allowed to throw the first pitch of a baseball game? Huh? Can you answer me that, Hanley? No, of course you aren't good enough to do that. You're just a punk kid playing baseball on easy street at the bottom of the division who isn't valuable at all because none of your at-bats even matter. Loser.

Moving on to a little snippet from later on....

• Derek Jeter really isn't having one of his best years. But he remains one of the most clutch players ever. I know some stat people claim there's no such thing as a clutch hitter, and all I can say is they just haven't been paying enough attention.

Very easy for you to say that the day after that huge home run that eliminated me from the playoffs in my fantasy league on the last at-bat for either team in the week. You know what he was OPSing this month, September, the clutchiest of months, before that game last night? .442* That's clutch, baby. Is there a playoff hunt going on? I think there is....I wouldn't know though...I probably haven't been paying enough attention, as one of those stat people.

A lesson you'd do well to learn, Heyman. People have a tendency to remember a thing when it hits, but not when it misses. It's the root of all superstition, including your stupid theory of "clutch ability".

*Thanks to Fire Joe Morgan for the stat