Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Jeff Pearlman: King of Lazy Analysis

This is just lazy writing. Really, really lazy writing. I probably put more effort into these three intro sentences than Jeff put into his whole column.

Yes, Jason Bay is going to be big in New York-

Oh yeah? He is?

a big bust, that is

Oh wow. WHAT A HEADLINE. Absolute facial. You've been figuratively dunked on by Jeff Pearlman, Jason.

The statement came 28 years ago.

In the winter of 1981-82, the New York Mets were Big Apple nobodies -- a star-less, charisma-less franchise coming off of a miserable 41-62 strike-shortened season. The team had drawn 704,244 fans, seventh in the National League (and not even half the total of the cross-town Yankees), and its marketing exclamation, "The magic is back!" rang hollow. Unless Joel Youngblood and Pete Falcone possessed some sort of secret, Houdini-esque abilities, the magic was not back. It was, in fact, dead.

13 comments:

Jack M said...

I think you've ruined any chance you might have had at getting a free copy of his book about the Cowboys.

Unknown said...

I agree with Jack.

Tonus said...

George Foster was five years removed from his best seasons and in clear decline when the Mets signed him. Jason Bay is coming off of one of his best seasons. He may flop as a Met, but that will probably be more a result of the Crabtree Curse.

And whatever it was that caused David Wright's power outage, it affected his numbers on the road as well, where he hit only 5 homers all year. I'm not sure that you can just blame it on the new ballpark.

Anyway, I think Jeff outgrew this site. He probably still gets grief from Peter King for ever showing up here.

Larry B said...

Nah, he'll be here eventually. He Googles himself constantly. I WANT MY COPY OF BOYS WILL BE BOYS, PEARLMAN. YOU PROMISED IT TO ME 10 MONTHS AGO AND I STILL WANT IT.

Anonymous said...

Lets see here 2009 Mets:

Carlos Delgado: 94 ABs
Carlos Beltran: 308 ABs
Jose Reyes: 147 ABs
David Wright: that whole concussion thing.

Reason the Mets biggest HR hitter was Murphy: Injuries to four best hitters on the team? No? It was the new stadium?

Also, being a Phillies fan I may be speaking out my ass, but does the Jason Bay signing really bring "enough hype and hope to fill three stadiums."? I mean I could see excitement that they now have an OF of Beltran, Bay and Pagan/Francoeur, but you know what beats the Bay signing? GETTING HALF YOUR TEAM OFF THE DISABLED LIST.

Also, the Mets rotation still sucks ass, so um... ya, there's that.

Derpsauce said...

I honestly can't believe Pearlman wrote that. Sometimes he's lazy like when he wrote the Rickey Henderson article from eons ago, but at least it made me chuckle a little. This was just, well, worthless. Comparing him to some guy from 28 years ago that 95% (and that may be generous to Jeffo) of the reading audience has never heard of is pointless, especially considering the significant differences that Pearlman generously decided to point out in this article. That just sucked, plain and simple.

Elliot said...

If you wake me up at 2:00 in the morning, and put a bat in my hands, I can hit 25 homers--maybe.

Chris W said...

http://jeffpearlman.com/?p=4406

Meanwhile, Jeff is frustrated that the Mets are content with their starting 1B. I'm not sure how he proposes they replace him, assuming signing a great hitter to a fair $ deal is somehow a ridiculous prospect in his mind, according to this article

Anonymous said...

I cant believe nobody has picked up on what truly makes this column so absurdly lazy -- the first half of the article is basically cut and pasted from his book, The Bad Guys Won! Jesus Christmas, Jeff Pearlman -- pull yourself together.

dan-bob said...

I like references to obscure 80s players.

This just in: Kal Daniels
Tomorrow's news: Zane Smith
Yesterday's news: Randy Ready

That is all.

Adam said...

So the Mets once traded for a guy who was an outfielder and he ended up sucking therefore some other guy 30 years later who is also an outfielder will suck? Nice logic.

I also feel like this is the exact same crap they were writing in Bahston in 2008. Will Jason Bay be able to fill Manny's shoes? Will he be able to handle the preshaaah of the Sawwwks? Plus he came from the Pirates and he is Canadian so he clearly is no good.

Unknown said...

The logic is terrible here, but the underlying point -- if Pearlmen were capable of making one -- is fairly solid.

Bay is a terrible defensive left-fielder. He is a well-above average hitter. Together, this makes a worthwhile, but not overly valuable player. He got way more money than he should have because he hits for good power.

I doubt he'll be too much of a "bust", though: his traditional offensive numbers should be good and that's all a lot of sportswriters care about, anyway.

Make no mistake, though, it was not a good signing at all.

Victor Catano said...

One point about CItiField: Having watched the Mets all last year, I can tell you with certainty that the visiting teams had absolutely no trouble hitting home runs.

The problem was that the Mets were fielding a AAA team for most of the season.