Bitching about the All-Star rosters is dumb

Does that make me dumb by extension if I bitch about the people bitching about the rosters?  Probably.  But there are always going to be fifty worthless "HERE IS MY LIST OF ALL-STAR SNUBS" articles written in the days after the rosters get announced, and I have to post about something.  So here goes.  Lead us off, Scott Miller.

First base: Chris Davis, Orioles
My pick: Davis

Talk about getting out the vote. The Orioles did it better than MTV ever dreamed of.

That's one of the worst jokes I've ever read.

Second base: Robinson Cano, Yankees
My pick: Jason Kipnis, Indians

Yes, this is coin-flip territory. But Kipnis is having one Rock and Roll Hall of Fame summer, 

That is a thing that is in that player's city!

and the message isn't carrying too well across Lake Erie to the rest of the land. Cano, Boston's Dustin Pedroia and the Angels' Howie Kendrick are deserving as well. But Kipnis leads all AL second basemen in OPS (.904), and he's played a significant role in Cleveland's reconstruction. If you want to go Pedroia, that's an acceptable answer, too. 

And so is Cano, who (it shocks me to have to say this) has shouldered a heavy load in a super thin Yankees lineup.  He is usually "protected" (haha snark quotation marks rule) by Travis Hafner.  But go ahead, tell us why you think Cano is the wrong choice.

One very demerit-inducing trend regarding Cano: He's a far worse player at home in New York than on the road this year. In 44 games on the road, he's hitting .326 with 13 homers and 33 RBI. In 43 games at home, he's at .255, 7 and 25. 

Yes, that's right.  Looking at home/road splits over the course of 85 games is a great way to choose your All-Stars.  Not that Kipnis is a bad choice, I just find this criterion to be pretty fucking stupid.  Quick, do another blimp crash of a joke!

Jay-Z might want to address this with his new client. Next thing you know, Cano will be in a Visa commercial addressing his New York nightlife.

Oh dear Lord.

Third base: Miguel Cabrera, Tigers
My pick: Cabrera

Fire up the cognitive dissonance tornado siren!

No question here it's Cabrera, 

True.

and man, is this a tough position to crack. 

Also very true.

The Orioles' Manny Machado (who makes the club as a reserve) and the Rays' Evan Longoria, the Athletics' Josh Donaldson and the Rangers' Adrian Beltre (who didn't) … it's almost like shortstop in the AL in the 1990s when you had a young Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra. Somebody deserving is going to get hosed. 

Correct.  Now stop, before you--

Speaking of which, how does Donaldson not make the team? 

Wait, what?  You answered that question literally one sentence ago.

Somebody deserving is going to get hosed. Speaking of which, how does Donaldson not make the team? 

Somebody deserving is going to get hosed. Speaking of which, how does Donaldson not make the team? 

Somebody deserving is going to get hosed. Speaking of which, how does Donaldson not make the team? 

Amazing.

Was Angel Hernandez in charge of choosing the reserves?

It's hard to screw up an Angel Hernandez joke, but I think you just did.

Catcher: Joe Mauer, Twins
My pick: Mauer

No other choice here. The Royals' Salvador Perez, the Indians' Carlos Santana, the Astros Jason Castro, the Orioles' Matt Wieters and the Blue Jays' J.P. Arencibia all are having nice seasons, but nobody is more deserving than Mauer (even if Target Field has stripped him of much of his power). 

Career SLG%: .467

2013 SLG%: .466

It's annoying how many writes and fans think Mauer's 2009 (28 HR, 2nd highest total in his career is 13; .587 SLG%, 2nd highest total in a full season in his career is .507) was the norm.  He will almost certainly hit double digits in home runs this year, for only the 4th time in 10 seasons.  

Hard to believe this will be Mauer's first start since 2010.

Well, he was garbage in 2011, and in 2012 he deserved it but the Twins were garbage and the Rangers had won two pennants in a row and sold out like every game and Mike Napoli had been awesome in 2011 (especially in the playoffs), so no, it's not hard to believe at all.

Second base: Brandon Phillips, Reds
My pick: Matt Carpenter, Cardinals

Nobody is a bigger fan of Phillips than me, and he totally got screwed a year ago by not even making the team. That said, Carpenter's OPS is 144 points higher than Phillips' and the kid is having a knockout season. 

All reasonable things to say, so let's just leave it at--

Phillips' lineage, though, is pretty cool: He becomes the first Reds second baseman elected to start an All-Star Game since Hall of Famer Joe Morgan in 1978. Does this mean there one day will be a FireBrandonPhillips.com website?

Barf barf barf barf barf barf barf barf barf

Ken Rosenthal gets in on the action with an utterly worthless column based on the premise that, because the A's are having a good season, they deserve to have a bunch of All-Stars.  Watch him refute his own arguments and wander off aimlessly into nothingness.

They can’t get a new ballpark. Raw sewage flooded parts of their current ballpark. So, the least baseball could do for the Oakland Athletics would be to give them more than one All-Star, right?

I mean, I guess, but only if they really had more than one guy who was deserving.  Unfortunately it's hard to make the case that they do.

The A’s, after all, are the defending AL West champions. 

Not a thing that should be considered when picking All-Stars.  Of course it happens indirectly all the time, because successful teams have more fans voting, but it's not like any objective voter is going to sit there and say "Hey, the A's won their division last year.  I think I'm going to vote for Josh Reddick over Mike Trout."

They’re leading the West again, rolling along with the second-best record in the AL. Over the past 365 days, their 103-63 record is the best in the majors.

Only slightly less important than their 2012 performance.  I mean in theory I hear what he's saying, and it's kind of too bad that Donaldson didn't make it, but the fact is the A's don't really have many All-Star caliber players.  Ho hum, it happens, they're still a really good team.  This is like an 800 word column (I'm not posting all of it here) that probably should be a 125 character tweet.

And they get one stinking All-Star?

Ah, there are reasons. There always are reasons. 

Spoken like someone who already knows they have nothing to say.  

And I’m guessing that at least one of the injustices — the exclusion of right-hander Grant Balfour, the only AL closer who has not blown a save this season — will be corrected.

Complaining about which RPs belong or don't belong on the roster is the stupidest subset of the already very stupid activity of complaining about players who belong or don't belong on the roster.

Righty Bartolo Colon, the Athletics’ only selection, is scheduled to start next Sunday, two days before the All-Star Game. That alone could open a spot for Balfour, according to the “Sunday Pitcher Rule” in the collective-bargaining agreement.

Great, let's move on to the rest of the non-substance of your argument.

The rule gives pitchers who start the Sunday before the ASG the option of participating or not participating. If they participate, they cannot pitch more than one inning. If they elect not to participate, they are replaced on the roster but treated in the same manner as other All-Stars, and encouraged to attend and be announced at the game.

OK, seriously, can we move on?

So, Colon can take one for the team, creating an opening for Balfour. 

JESUS CHRIST.

The withdrawals of other Sunday starters or injuries also could lead to extra roster spots. AL manager Jim Leyland alluded to possible adjustments Saturday, saying, “I wouldn’t jump the gun on anything, because things do change.”

Leyland is a piece of shit, but as Rosenthal himself will shortly show us, he made a pretty solid set of choices in assembling his team.

Leyland, of course, will take the hit for the Great Oakland Snub, 

Seriously?

and his five-player, final-man ballot, as we shall see, is absurd. But with his bullpen, all he did was try to balance his left-handers and right-handers.

To try to win the game, because for better or for worse, it's in the interest of an ASG manager to assemble a roster that will win the game, and not worry about finding space for marginal guys who play for good teams simply because of the fact that they play for good teams.

The players elected righties Mariano Rivera of the Yankees and Joe Nathan of the Rangers, overlooking Balfour. Leyland added lefties Glen Perkins of the Twins and Brett Cecil of the Blue Jays, both of whom have been brilliant.

So you're going to refute your own argument?

Balfour has excelled against left-handed hitters, holding them to a .571 OPS, but Perkins has been even better (.526) and Cecil downright absurd (.293). 

OK, yes you are.

The game determines home-field advantage for the World Series. Can’t fault Leyland for choosing the optimal pieces. Can’t fault him at all.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WRITING ABOUT THEN?  YOU'RE WASTING EVERYONE'S TIME.  I DON'T WANT TO BE WRITING THIS.  NO ONE ELSE WANTS TO BE READING IT.  GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, ROSENTHAL.

The other Oakland snubs — shortstop Jed Lowrie, 

Maybe having the 5th best season of any SS in the AL, maybe

outfielder Coco Crisp, 

If you really stretch your imagination, you could say he's been a top 8 OF in the AL this year

even third baseman Josh Donaldson 

Already discussed, and while he's awesome, I think it's safe to say Drinky Cabrera and Machado have been awesomer (the latter because of his stellar defense).

— are less egregious. 

Remember the part when he was like "AND THE A'S ONLY GET ONE STINKING ALL-STAR?  THIS IS AN OUTRAGE"?  

The fans elected the Orioles’ J.J. Hardy at short, the players picked the Tigers’ Jhonny Peralta. Crisp missed time with a strained left hamstring, and the fans and players picked six outfielders ahead of him. Donaldson, well, he just got caught up in an unfortunate numbers game.

All correct.

The Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera, naturally, is the fans’ elected starter at third base, while the Orioles’ Manny Machado was the players’ selection. 

I know it's redundant to leave these in when I already addressed it, but it's kind of funny to see him walk everything back, isn't it?

Leyland went with three second basemen, 

All of whom are having seasons so much better than Lowrie or Crisp that it's not even funny.  And Donaldson has been great, but all three of these 2Bs have been better than him too.

choosing the Indians’ Jason Kipnis to go with the fan’s pick, the Yankees’ Robinson Cano, and players’ choice, the Red Sox’s Dustin Pedroia.

But the manager also bypassed Evan Longoria at third, instead picking Ben Zobrist, who offers versatility as a switch-hitter and multi-position player, as his only Ray.

And that's pretty sketchy, because Zobrist is not having a good year (.262/.348/.375), but again, Leyland is trying to win the game.

All that is understandable. 

Thank you for continuing to write nothing at all.

What is not understandable is Leyland’s final-man ballot, which should have been something like this: Donaldson, Longoria, the Angels’ Howie Kendrick, Rangers’ Adrian Beltre and Red Sox’s Jacoby Ellsbury, Daniel Nava or Jose Iglesias.

Except that... say it with me now, Herm Edwards... Leyland is... playing to...

Leyland instead chose five setup relievers — the Jays’ Steve Delabar, Yankees’ David Robertson, Red Sox’s Koji Uehara, Rangers’ Tanner Scheppers and Tigers’Joaquin Benoit. It’s nice to see such pitchers get recognition. But at the expense of worthy position players? Please.

I'll just leave this here.

NL manager Bruce Bochy put together a much more representative and intriguing final-man ballot — the Nationals’ Ian Desmond, Braves’ Freddie Freeman, Giants’ Hunter Pence and Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig and Adrian Gonzalez. 

That ballot is in no way "more representative" than the AL ballot.  The only way either ballot could be non-representative is if the players on it were shitty (nope), or if they were from the opposite league (nope).  It is intriguing, I guess, if you really care about Puig making the team (which I'm sure he will, but let's not shit our pants over whether or not that happens--looking at you, Papelbon) or if you're intrigued by the idea of good-not-great players like Freeman or Pence maybe making an extra $25K due to a bonus clause in their contracts or something.

That’s the way the ballot is supposed to be used — as a last resort for deserving players (and in the case of Pence, as a reward for one of Bochy’s own).

SHAME ON YOU, JIM LEYLAND.  Rosenthal hopes you encounter a situation next week in which you desperately need another third baseman, but only have a bench full of relief pitchers.  Who will look like the idiot when that happens?  (Note: I promise you that outside of the .001% chance that both Machado and Cabrera get hurt during the game, that is not going to happen)

Scott Miller attempts to defend BBWAA, makes zero salient points, makes BBWAA look exactly as idiotic as it is

This whole HOF thing is just fucking infuriating.  I can't describe it any more creatively than that.  I've spent hours discussing it with various other internet loser nerds the past couple days, but this relatively short post will probably be the only one I write about the subject.  It's just... too... fucking... infuriating.

Outrage?

I'll tell you what's an outrage: 

Distraction?  I'll give you a distraction from my colleagues' idiocy that I wish you would focus on rather than focusing on them:

That 20 members of the Baseball Writers Association of America did not vote for Ted Williams in 1966 (out of 302 ballots). That 11 whack-jobs decided Babe Ruth was not worthy of their votes in 1936 (226 ballots). That, somehow, 36 writers bypassed Jackie Robinson in 1962 (160 ballots).

Can you believe baseball writers have been retarded jackasses for decades?  It's true!  Now let's just agree that because 5% of voters didn't cast ballots for Babe Ruth 75 years ago, what just happened during this election is totally acceptable.

That the first strong wave of the Steroid Era washed back out to sea Wednesday without anyone establishing a beachhead on the shores of Cooperstown is not an outrage.

If that were the only thing that happened, it would sort of be kind of acceptable.  Instead, guys like Time Raines and Mike Piazza and Edgar Martinez and Curt Schilling and Craig Biggio are not in the HOF yet, when they absolutely should be.

It is to be applauded on many fronts (Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa). 

You know, if there's one thing baseball writers just don't do enough of, it's applauding themselves.  Good for Scott for taking some him time and giving himself the pat on the back he doesn't at all deserve.

It is to be constructively criticized on others (Craig Biggio, Jack Morris, Tim Raines).

Jack Morris doesn't belong in the HOF unless he buys a ticket.  As for the other two guys, and plenty of others on the ballot, you are sadly fucking mistaken if you think the BBWAA deserves some "constructive criticism" for freezing them out.  They deserve a "swift ball-kicking."

But what it is not is a disaster, or catastrophe, or the coming of the apocalypse.

It certainly isn't, and of course it's just sports, blah blah blah, but it's awfully fucking disingenuous to tell readers "Hey don't get all worked up about these HOF omissions!" when a good chunk of the BBWAA spent the last several months getting plenty worked up about the candidates (and telling the public about how worked up they were).

Hall of Fame voting throughout history has been messy, imperfect and, often, contentious. But one thing the test of time has proven, unequivocally, is that the process works. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH

Spoken like that awesome BCS Twitter feed that they introduced to try to squash momentum in favor of a playoff. "Hey just a reminder, under our system #1 and #2 always play each other!" "Hey, just a reminder, most players who deserve to be in the HOF eventually end up there!"  Clearly, in each case, there is no better way to do things.

Not only does it work, it works better in baseball than it does for any other Hall of Fame in any other sport.

Again, how about some distractions?  The football HOF is a total joke.  At least we're not them.  Now leave us be.

If Tuesday's voting was circumspect, far better that than rushing ahead recklessly. 

No.  Not far better, or better in any way.  You're holding out on a bunch of guys who have never been linked to steroids and who don't even have stats that suggest steroid use, so that you can posture and grandstand about what awesome responsibilities you have.  You can all go get fucked by a hippo.  Guess what happens next year?  Maddux, Glavine and Thomas join the ballot.  And then there will be like 12 people on there who absolutely deserve to get in, no argument, and another 5 who arguably should get in, when writers can only vote for 10 guys and the vast majority of them vote for fewer.  Had guys like Biggio and Raines been rightfully elected this year, it would be less of a problem.  Not hard to figure out.

As Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson said during the MLB Network telecast, given the number of decorated and controversial players on this bloated ballot, “this was one of the most talked about classes in history.”

And somehow this justifies electing none of the extremely well qualified candidates.

Tuesday's shutout is a setback to the joy and pageantry of the Hall's induction weekend in July 

SOMEONE THINK OF THE WRITERS AT THE CEREMONY!  IT WON'T BE AS FUN THIS YEAR AS IT USUALLY IS!

and, larger picture, it is a sad day for baseball. Ever since well-placed flashlights started revealing skeletons in the juicers' closets, there have been many sad days.

Oh my God.  Go fuck yourself.

But as the late Hall of Famer Sparky Anderson regularly reminded, the game is bigger than any one man. It flourished post-Ruth, flourished post-Stan Musial and Robinson and it will flourish post-juicers.

Barfbarfbarfbarfbarfbarfbarf

The last time the BBWAA failed to elect a player was in 1996. Yet from that class came six players who eventually were elected to the Hall of Fame.

And from this class should come, even for the mall hall people, at least seven players (Biggio, Bagwell, Piazza, Raines, Schilling, Clemens, Bonds) who are absolute locks and six more (Walker, Martinez, Trammell, the rest of the roiders) who probably should be in.

Again, a process.

Again, a sentence fragment that tries to justify something that is totally unjustifiable by relying on the mind-numbingly idiotic assertion that "these things take time."

Biggio's 68.2 percent topped a vote requiring 75 percent for election, leaving him well-positioned for the next year or two. Two years ago, for example, Roberto Alomar did not gain entry in his first year on the ballot, falling just short at 73.7 percent (another outrage). Then he jumped to 90 percent of the vote in his second year on the ballot.

This isn't even the thrust of this rant, it's for another time, but why?  Why?  Why did that happen?  Did like 70 voters decide to stop being dipshits during those two elections?

Everyone focus up for this part, I'm about to say something that will sound hyperbolic but I swear is not intended as such.

Major League Baseball issued a statement following the shutout that notes election to Cooperstown is “our game's most extraordinary individual honor” and reads, in part, “achieving enshrinement in Cooperstown is difficult, as it should be.”

That was much more on the mark than players' union boss Michael Weiner's reaction, calling the election “unfortunate, if not sad. Those empowered to help the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum document the history of the game failed to recognize the contributions of several Hall of Fame worthy players.”

Wrong. What is unfortunate and sad is that the union, pre-Weiner, stonewalled every attempt at steroid testing for years. No small part of the reason we reached this point is because the union for far too long permitted and nourished an atmosphere in which its members who cheated flourished (both on the field and financially) as its members who stayed clean were put at a disadvantage.

OK, here we go.  "This is not hyperbole" disclaimer is in place.  This blog has existed for almost six years.  I have probably written something like 500 posts for it, and read a shitload of bad sportswriting in search of articles to post about.  

(/Larry B clears throat)  

This attempt by Miller to sweep MLB's tolerance, if not tacit approval of steroid use under the rug is probably the most dishonest thing I have ever seen in these 5+ years and 500 posts.  It would take time I do not have to go back and review all my old posts to see if any other articles I've read can match it, but I certainly can't come up with anything off the top of my head.  Pretending that it was the union and the union alone that prevented steroid testing from appearing sooner than it did is fuckheadery of the highest order.  Scott Miller is, in a few words, a tremendous asshole.  May he be fired immediately and never again heard from by baseball fans.  Chris W said this and I think it's a good way to end this post so I can go calm down: "Who harms the game more? Some guys using steroids in an environment who encouraged it? Or fringe non-players who turn the game into an adversarial me-fest so people pay attention to the sad little Chasses and Lupicas of the world?" Yup.

Expert geniuses offer double top secret insider brilliant MLB free agent predictions

Let's take some time to appreciate this, shall we? After all, CBS doesn't just pay their baseball analysts to sit around and look good (although the analysts certainly do that!). It pays them to formulate informed and insightful baseball analysis. And so we have this lovely chart:

We have ringleader Gregg Doyel, troll extraordinaire, claiming the Yankees and Red Sox will sign every single one of these players and that the Yankees will end up with both Rollins and Reyes. BUT WHAT OF THE CAPTAIN?????1111?11. That's some nice trollin', Gregg. As Chris W says, "Gotta love Gregg for being the Skip Bayless of the internet." Then we have Vice Shithead Scott Miller saying the Pirates will shell out cash for Beltran and Buehrle will end up in Miami. We have a presumably pretentious dude named C. Trent claiming the Marlins will come up with the cash for Pujols and that Buehrle will somehow end up with the Cubs. We have three experts who say the Padres will decide overpaying Heath Bell is a good idea and in line with their organizational philosophy. Not be left out of the fun, Miller thinks the A's will the team that gives Bell the $8 MM per season it'll take to get him. We have Matt Sndyer thinking Prince Fielder will say "Yeah, Baltimore, THAT'S where I'll spend the rest of the prime of my career." We have Larry Dobrow thinking the Marlins will say "What's the one thing we definitely don't need? Starting pitching. So let's give C.J. Wilson the $14 MM a season he's asking for, why not." There's plenty more, too. The hits just keep on coming. This might be the most spectacular display of WRONG I've ever seen in graphical format. Here, I made it slightly less stupid (and I'm being generous about the Beltran to the Marlins, Reyes to the Brewers, and Rollins to the Mariners entries):

You're welcome.

WMTMQR: There shall be no TMQR

What a bummer. How could this be? The guy writes an entire column centered around making predictions for all 32 teams in haiku format--yes, haiku format--and I can't find anything in it really worth picking on. Seems ridiculous but it's the case. I dunno, maybe I'm going soft in my old age. Maybe Gregg has written moronic drivel intentionally all these years and decided to cut his act this week. Maybe all this hoping to one day study law is giving me some kind of a mental block. Whatever the reason, Gregg gets a pass this week. I'm sure he'll be back to his old tricks next Tuesday, speculating that Team X kicked a 48 yard field goal on 4th and 12 that made the score 24-3 early in the third quarter because Team X's coach was trying to avoid having a shutout on his resume.

And since there's no TMQR I think I will turn this into a grab bag of a post. When you live in your Grandma's basement (my parents recently gave me the heave-ho out of theirs because I was too busy writing about baseball without knowing what sunlight feels like to help them with the chores), you can do whatever you want with your blogoblog.

Speaking of basement dwelling trolls who know nothing about how baseball actually works, I can't wait for the release of the Moneyball movie because 1) it looks like a decent flick and 2) it'll give crusty old fuckasses like Plaschke a chance to roll out the same sorry criticisms of Beane and his methods they've been rolling out for five or six years now. HEY THE A'S NEVER WON A WORLD SERIES SO THAT PROVES BEANE KNOWS NOTHING. AND LOOK, THE A'S HAVEN'T BEEN GOOD FOR SEVERAL SEASONS WHICH ALSO PROVES THAT BEANE'S MANAGERIAL METHODS DID NOT STAND THE TEST OF TIME.

Moving on. I need to make couple apologies.

To Jeff Pearlman: you were right. Jason Bay is fucking terrible. He's not terrible for the reasons you said he'd be terrible, but he's terrible all the same. You saw it coming. A feather in your cap, sir. And I still want my free copy of The Rocket That Fell To Earth whenever you get a chance.

To Phillies fans: I was wrong. Despite a buttshit lineup (team OPS+ of 97), your team is going to win like 103 games. Good for them. I hope they win their first two against the Diamondbacks easily, then drop the next two in Arizona, and then lose game five at home as Ryan Howard strikes out looking with the game winning runs on base. As long as your team is going to have a starting staff capable of annual regular season success, the least I can wish upon your cavalcade of trashball moron fans is a devastatingly painful annual playoff disappointment. Worst of luck to you in October.

Finally, a minor rant. After realizing TMQ had nothing to offer me this week I moved on to a well that never runs dry- CBS's Scott Miller. He wrote a column about who deserves to win baseball's individual awards this season. It was actually pretty inoffensive minus this little bit of cognitive dissonance:

NL Cy Young

Ian Kennedy, Diamondbacks

Arguments for: Leads NL with 18 wins, instrumental in bringing baseball relief to desert.

Arguments against: Haven't we learned enough from sabermetrics that pitchers just can't, ahem, control wins very much? And Kennedy's other numbers don't come close to stacking up.

AL MVP

Jacoby Ellsbury, Red Sox

Arguments against: Ellsbury is 27 runs behind Curtis Granderson.

Curtis Granderson, Yankees

Arguments: Granderson leads the majors with 125 runs scored, 27 more than the No. 2 run-scorer.

Ah yes, finally, in the year 2011, even mouth-breathers like Miller understand that pitching wins are a pretty useless statistic. But runs scored? Now there's something you can set your watch to.

That's not where I'm going with this, though. Where I'm going is directly into the eye (with a sharp object) of anyone who wants to say that Justin Upton is worthy of winning the MVP. Now I don't hate Upton, he's a good player who's had a good year. But there's a problem that prevents me from saying he should win big-time hardware: I'm a Rockies fan. And I will never, ever, ever, ever stop being furious with writers who diminish the accomplishments of any Rockie because of the Coors Field effect while ignoring the home/road splits of every other player in the league. Yes, many Rockies have sizable differences between their road and home numbers. Yes, lots of non-Rockies have the exact same problem. No, this criticism is never leveled against them and it makes me want to throw puppies off a cliff.

Such is the case with Upton this year, hitting .348/.427/.641 at Chase and .246/.331/.444 everywhere else. If the Rockies and Diamondbacks switched spots in the standings and Carlos Gonzalez had Upton's splits, you'd never hear the end of how Gonzalez is nothing but a guy who's lucky to play half his games at Coors and would otherwise be a 4th outfielder. Chase isn't Coors, but it's a pretty solid hitter's park. Don't expect the average baseball writer to know that. Instead it's all DERP DERP DERP LOLCOORS DERP. Any writer who gives his or her #1 vote to Upton this year but didn't give his or her #1 vote to "Coors Creation" Matt Holliday in 2007 (.301/.374/.485 on the road) should be immediately dragged into the nearest town square and beaten to death with bricks. That is all.

Scott Miller is bad at everything

There is nothing redeeming about this article. It has no message, no insights, and no element of originality. Which is why I read it and will now make you read it too.

Adam Wainwright, Matt Holliday and now the big one: Albert Pujols is on the St. Louis shelf, leaving the baseball picture looking through the Arch

Huh? Again?

leaving the baseball picture looking through the Arch

Let's just move on.

even muddier than the mighty Mississippi below it.

When a picture is described as muddied, that means it's unclear or difficult to discern. It's not difficult to discern what the picture is like for the Cardinals right now: it sucks big time elephant ass. If Pujols was struck by lightning, knocking him out of the lineup for two weeks but possibly leaving him with even more superhuman hitting skills, that would muddy the picture. Anyways.

As if there's not enough drama, pain and angst in this Cardinals hardball season,

I certainly hope those greedy cuntwads over in the NFL can figure things out so we don't miss this fall's pigskin season.

and as if there weren't already enough questions surrounding Pujols' future, now comes a left wrist fracture,

Which sort of brings up the same questions as an uncertain contract situation if you take a lot of meth and think on it for a while.

four-to-six weeks on ice and the biggest challenge yet for Tony La Russa's gritty club.

Lunchpail alert!

This was not the Monday news the Cardinals wanted to wake up to.

But it is the kind of news they've been waking up to all season.

Ah, the ol' Bill Plaschke sentence-paragraph.

That second single-paragraph sentence was made more dramatic by the blank space surrounding it, no?

That the Cardinals are tied for first place in the NL Central with Wainwright out, eight players on the disabled list and with Chris Carpenter having produced just one victory is crazy.

The NL Central: riding the short bus since 1995. Since realignment its teams have combined to win one World Series (Cardinals in '06) and two other pennants (Cardinals in '04, Astros in '05). They're home to baseball's all-time most pathetic franchise (hint: rhymes with “tubs”) and baseball's most pathetic franchise of the past 20 years (rhymes with “zirates”).

There were people who wrote off the entire Cardinals season when they lost starting right-hander Wainwright this spring.

A favorite technique of shitty sportswriters: talk condescendingly about a vague, unidentifiable mass of people who are being proven wrong. That's a Mariotti favorite. “Some people said Jay Cutler was a big game quarterback, BUT I KNEW BETTER! AND NOW LOOK WHERE WE ARE!!!!!” I don't think anyone with any fucking credibility at all said the Cardinals' season was "lost" when Wainwright's injury came to light. At most, people talked about how either the Brewers or the Reds might be the favorite at that point.

Then Holliday had an emergency appendectomy on April 1 and missed seven games, then landed on the disabled list with a quadriceps strain last month while he was leading the NL with a .342 batting average.

AND PEOPLE SAID THAT WOULD CAUSE THE FRANCHISE TO LIQUIDATE ITS ASSETS AND LITERALLY CEASE TO EXIST! LOTS OF PEOPLE! BUT THEY WERE WRONG!

The list of fallen Cardinals goes on, from third baseman David Freese (broken hand)

Oh my! THE David Freese? The 28 year old with 26 XBHs in 400 career PAs?

to backup catcher Gerald Laird (broken finger),

Not Gerald Laird! He's one of the top 60 catchers in the league!

but we'll skip all those gory details.

There are so many that, eventually, your eyes glaze over like when one of Grandpa's stories moves onto, "Then, my drive on the 14th hole ...."

Very apt comparison. Voluntarily reading about the 10-ish injuries sustained by Cardinals players this year = being forced to humor an elderly relative who is a bad storyteller.

What's important now is that the Cardinals are stuck without their middle-of-the-order rock just when Pujols was finally turning around his season.

During the slowest start of his career, Pujols went a career-high 105 at-bats without a homer from April 24-May 23. It was like watching Bruce Springsteen on stage singing with a dead microphone.

Huh?

On May 4, Pujols was hitting .233. By May 29, his slugging percentage had dipped to .395. There was no sound, no power ... nothing.

Sound being one of the key elements of successful hitting, along with strike zone discipline, quick hands, and skin.

Everyone knew it would be only a matter of time until Pujols flexed, which is what makes the timing of this fractured wrist so miserable for the Cardinals.

Such a novel, profound perspective. Scott Miller is a fucking pro. How many baseball fans made that observation when news of the injury came out? The answer is probably somewhere between “a millionty billion” and “all of them.”

(a bunch of wasted words describing how Pujols was having a good June deleted because, well, no fucking shit he was having a good June)

Pujols has been on the disabled list just twice in his career, and the Cardinals are not accustomed to playing without him. Since 2006, Tony La Russa has only written 23 lineups that did not include Pujols' name.

But he was A GENIUS when he did so- AN ARTIST AT WORK when putting someone else at first and in Pujols's normal lineup spot. La Russa did it in a way that no other manager could have. Just ask some asshole baseball snob who knows about 5% as much as he thinks he knows and constantly puffs La Russa's penis, someone like George Will (if Will is unavailable ask Bob Costas). Tony La Russa and his No Country For Old Men haircut can't retire soon enough for me. I hope it happens as I'm writing this.

The bizarre thing is, this season started with visions of the Cardinals without Pujols, only not quite so soon. Entering the final year of his contract before free agency this winter, Pujols set an extension deadline of the day he reported to spring training.

Did he? I heard nothing of it. It was only the biggest story in all of baseball during spring training (placing it 45^th on the list of biggest stories in all of sports at that time, just behind “Favre plays catch with Mississippi high school football players” and just ahead of “Rex Ryan promises media that impending lockout won't prevent him from eating a pound of bacon per day”).

When that didn't happen, Pujols spent 30 minutes talking with the media that February day about an uncertain future, vowing that would be the last time he spoke of his personal situation.

To which the media responded: “good luck with that!”

He's kept that promise, even following a much-celebrated pre-game hug with Cubs general manager Jim Hendry at Wrigley Field in May that fueled all kinds of Pujols-as-a-future-Cub speculation.

Giving Pujols a 10 year, $300 million contract so he can give them 3 or 4 years of the downside of his prime and then become a complete payroll anchor would be such a Cubs thing to do.

As La Russa told me in May, "He's very conscious that he doesn't want to distract from what we're trying to do. And that's a very honorable thing to do."

Brilliant gambit by La Russa to acknowledge his star player that way. You think any old garden-variety manager would have had the smarts to do that? Yes? Psh. You probably don't even realize that batting the pitcher 8^th increases a team's expected runs per game by 0.00069 during night games on artificial turf when there's a full moon.

Measured against this, the Cardinals undoubtedly would take those distractions in a heartbeat.

Yeah, I imagine they'd rather have Pujols playing than not playing. Step 1: hire Scott Miller to write for your publication. Step 2: wait for the awards and $$$$ to start rolling in.

At best, Pujols will be back, sometime between July 20 and Aug. 1.

Commas, when overused, tend to break up, a sentence.

But beyond that, there are questions that right now cannot be answered.

Like “How much longer are teams going to pay Jeff Francouer to have a .290 OBP?” or “Which team has more zilcharoo meathead fans: the Mets or the Phillies?”

Wrist injuries can punish hitters long after they're again playable, especially someone with the quick wrists and bat speed of Pujols. Baltimore's Derrek Lee had his 2010 season ruined by one that still isn't right, and a bad wrist wrecked Vernon Wells' 2009 in Toronto.

And a year later the Angels stepped in and said WHAT? All we have to do is give up Mike Napoli and Juan Rivera and pay Wells's terrible contract for the next four years and we get him? There's gotta be a catch!

Once Pujols returns, can he again this summer be the same hitter he's been for the past month, or will he be hobbled?

The second one?

And at 31 (his listed age), what of his impending contract negotiations? Teams will consider his age and the fact that by today's post-Steroid Era standards, he probably doesn't have more than two or three more years left in his prime. And that's with two good wrists.

And some team run by dipshits, like the Cubs or the Angels or the Dodgers, will still offer him every penny he's asking for. Christ- MLB teams are the worst at not bidding against themselves. See: Holliday, Matt. And in this case there are actually going to be other bidders too.

That the Cardinals are tied for first place today is a credit to their resiliency, pluck

Double lunchpail alert. And this time with extra pluck.

and to Pujols' turnaround. Lance Berkman is a great insurance policy to plug into first, and the NL Central is still winnable even with Pujols out temporarily.

I dunno, the Pirates are still hovering around .500. There's a chance they get hot and end up with the 86 wins it's going to take to grab that crown.

But until he is back and swinging hard, there will be some very unsettling questions as background noise.

And Miller ends with a fittingly delightful mix of nothingness and DUHness.

MVP = MCPP (Most Consummately Professional Player)

Amidst a lot of pretty inoffensive analysis in this Scott Miller MLB season's end column (Mauer and Pujols for MVP, Grienke and Lincecum for Cy, Coughlan and Andrus for Rookie of the Year, etc.) we have this, his No. 10 NL MVP vote. As in, the guy in the NL who Scott thinks is 10th most worthy of being voted Most Valuable Player.

10. Juan Pierre, Dodgers. I know there are several others who could have slotted in here (see next paragraph), but this guy deserves an MVP vote for two reasons: 1. He was lights out during Manny Ramirez's suspension and the Dodgers would not have kept rolling without him. 2. He was the consummate pro in handling things as a fourth outfielder this year, adding to the Dodgers' overall picture instead of subtracting from it.

Oh wow. Holy moley. Scott Miller, you are a fucking stump. First, let me make sure I get this straight. The two measurements of MVPness Scott uses here are: 1) being "lights out" (read: OPSing .781) for a 50 game stretch and 2) being a "consummate[ly] pro[fessional]" 4th outfielder. That's awesome. Hey, let's just go ahead and hand anyone who plays kind of well for a couple of months and isn't an asshole about playing time an MVP. Under that standard, only one guy in the league doesn't get a vote: Gary Matthews Jr. Sounds great.

Also, let's look at the names included in the next paragraph Scott references, who didn't make his top ten and are ostensibly less worthy of MVP consideration than Juan "accepts the role his manager gives him and doesn't kill his team in the process" Pierre:

Matt Kemp
Mark Reynolds
Derek Lee
Adrian Gonzalez
Ryan Braun
Jayson Werth
Todd Helton

Each of these players was roughly 10,000 times more valuable in 2009 than Pierre was. Matt Kemp is like a version of Pierre who doesn't throw like a toddler and can hit for power. Mark Reynolds is a "three true outcomes" guy- Pierre is a two true outcomes (infield hit, out) guy. And so and so forth, with a joke crafted to each of these players. They were all better than Pierre this season. Lots better. Way, way, way better. Some of them like Helton and Lee are even known for their consummate professionalism! Look, I'm willing to bet each might have been more valuable than Pierre if you put their worst 50 game stretch up against Juan's Ruthian 50 game Manny replacement phase (He had 17 extra base hits!). Words cannot describe how fucking indefensible this is. Fuck you, Scott Miller. Fuck you and the Bill Plaschke-esque idea you rode in on.

More World Series Eschatology!

The sky is falling! The country's about to elect a Muslim! Notradamus once suggested that the world could end in 2009! Scott Miller won't let the 2009 World Series take place!

Next year's World Series has, without question, got to be stopped.

What are you, a terrorist? The threat level just went up to lavender.

It simply cannot be played.

It can and it will.

At least, not into November, it can't.

It has and it can.

Or shouldn't.

Ok, now that we're done with the hyperbole, let's talk shop.

It is utterly preposterous, and anyone who either shivered through the rain and cold during Games 4 and 5 here or watched what devolved into a mud-wrestling contest in Game 4 knows this.

A team plays a full 162-game schedule, busts its collective butt for six months, nurse-maids its fragile pitchers, chews through hundreds of packs of sunflower seeds

hundreds of packs of sunflower seeds? I bet the big leaguers either (a) chew carcinogens or (b) buy their seeds by the bucket.

... and then reaches what is supposed to be the sport's pinnacle, only to wind up playing a bastardized version of something Abner Doubleday never would have created? While wearing hoodies and ear muffs?

Things Abner Doubleday never would have created:

1. Baseball
   
2. Baseball gloves
3. Cracker jack
4. Home Runs
5. An America without a Civil War
6. Cold baseball
   

This is not a defense of the Tampa Bay Rays, who lost because they were outplayed.

Truth.

This is not an apology for the Phillies, who didn't exactly hide the fact that Citizens Bank Park actually does not have a roof when the baseball world moved in last Friday.

Funny, nobody seemed to complain about the cold until ONE GAME GOT RAIN DELAYED OMG.

This is just to reiterate that playing baseball this late into October might be reaching the point where it's not worth the trade-off for an extra round of playoffs, which most people (with the help of commissioner Bud Selig's constant reminders) now take as gospel was a brilliant idea.

Probably the best, calmest and most sensible sentence in the article. But frankly: the wild card IS a good idea.

Let's be clear here: The wild-card round is a good idea. Great idea. In theory.

Communism is a great idea in theory, except it doesn't take into account human laziness. The wild-card round is a very good idea in theory and a good idea in practice.

But there are diminishing returns if it contributes toward pushing the World Series, what formerly was one of sports' best events, off the cliff.

Seriously: what the fuck. One game gets rained out and suddenly the whole concept of a World Series is "off the cliff"?

We're emerging from a fifth consecutive crappy World Series -- none of which has lasted longer than five games -- and the weather has directly affected at least three in a row.

Completely illogical argument. The weather has to be the worst factor to blame for this streak of shitty World Series.

The time is coming when we'll look back on this 46-hour Game 5 interruption as a minor inconvenience. We will be dog-paddling to stay afloat in some biblical-proportion flood, or losing fingers to frostbite in the teeth of a World Series-stopping blizzard, when we do.

Jesus. Scott Miller is batshit crazy. Guano-mound crazy. He probably advocated this legislation-crazy.

****************

Rational baseball fans: let's all get together and stop complaining about one rainout. Let's all realize that weather is weather, and that a couple of games taking place in the next numerical month is not a significant enough problem to radically restructure the regular season or the playoffs.

Writers:
For the last time: stop shouting just to shout. I know it makes you a paycheck, but it lowers the level of discourse in our society.

Standard FireJayMariotti Template

Relocated from the Gustav aftermath, with a special shout-out to reader kclock, who is housing me temporarily and providing me with interweb access so I can get back to my regular blogolife, which is much different than my regularlife, which involves Qdoba on a regular basis, but only because it's right by my place. I hope Gustav didn't destroy it. Anyways! Enough about me!

I thought we should just have a standard template for how to produce our blog posts here, so here's the basics on how do to what we do. Don't try this at home, kids!

FireJayMariotti Blogpost Part 1: Story with ridiculous headline.

Snakes on a different plane since Dunn's arrival

What? Oh, how witty! "Plane" can mean both a flying vehicle and a geometric concept! And it was a crazzzy movie involving Samuel L. Jackson, summer blockbusters and questionable ironies! I have had it up to here with these cottonpicking pop culture references I found on this cottonpicking blog! [Blogger's note: click on that link for hilarity.]

FireJayMariotti Blogpost Part 2: Make fun of the writer.

Scott Miller, this is your seventh time getting served on this site - you're no Jay Mariotti or Jemele Hill, but you're creeping up the list. This post dates from Larry B's pre-capital letters era, but it's no less incisive at your incredible stupidity. I even found an old bit I wrote shortly after this blog even started, where you un-ironically dropped the phrase "True Yankee". "Senior Writer" my ass!

FireJayMariotti Blogpost Part 3: Point out writer's abuse of simple baseball metrics:

Since his arrival on Aug. 12, the Diamondbacks have gone 7-5 -- and yet doubled their NL West lead on the Dodgers, from 1½ games to three.

So... the Dodgers' recent spell of below .500 baseball can be directly attributed to the influence of Adam Dunn?

FireJarMariotti Blogpost Part 4: Blatantly expose writer's affection for baseball "intangibles" and devalue the writer's article as a result.

Interesting stuff, especially when measured against Dodgers coach Larry Bowa's anger at the team's blasé ways while getting swept in Philadelphia, and when measured against one scout's observation the other day that Matt Kemp, who always hustles, didn't run hard to first in a recent game. The haphazard influence of Manny Ramirez?

Anecdotal evidence, to be sure, and definitely not fair to attach it to Ramirez. But worth watching as the Diamondbacks and Dodgers race -- or, in this division, leisurely jog -- down the stretch.

If it's "definitely not fair" to attach it to Ramirez, why did you just do that, Scott?

Also, I'm pretty sure Manny's 1.235 (!) OPS for the Dodgers so far is a LOT MORE HELPFUL than Matt Kemp, who always hustles, hustling out a routine grounder.

FireJayMariotti Blogpost Part 5: Harp on the writer's word choice - choosing even as small a sample as ONE WORD to demonstrate how the writer is a complete idiot.

But for a young lineup still learning how good it can be, it's a whole lot easier to put theories into action when a slugger such as Dunn lurks in the middle and guys like Reynolds no longer feel like they need to stop in a telephone booth on the way to the plate and change into Superman.

Adam Dunn has never lurked anywhere, since he's 6'6". His nickname is "Big Donkey". Also, when you go to a baseball game, they post the lineup on the big scoreboard in bright lights, so everyone in the stadium, even the other team!, knows exactly when Adam Dunn is going to bat.

Also, this Mark Reynolds guy sounds pretty weird.

FireJayMariotti Blogpost Part 6: Discuss blogger's personal opinion and conclude with a parting one-liner.

I miss Adam Dunn in Cincinnati. The Reds are running a AAA outfield out there ever day, and I miss Adam Dunn's pretty impressive production. I find it hilarious that the very things for which Dunn was excoriated in Cincinnati:

• a laid-back attitude
  
• a predilection for walks that allegedly prevents him from driving in runs
• lack of leadership in the clubhouse

are now become things for which Dunn is praised in Arizona. It must be Dunn's grungy T-shirt, his mulleted hairstyle, his have-fun attitude: that's why Adam Dunn is carrying the D-backs to the playoffs.

Not his .995 OPS. That has nothing to do with it.

Journalism 101

Not every observation that technically makes sense is clever enough to become a lead-in. This is a lesson CBSSportsline's Scott Miller has yet to learn.

Look, I don't want to be overly presumptuous here and tell Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Mike Huckabee their business.

But you want a real way out of this slumping housing market and looming recession?

Easy. Attach the prime interest rate to the homes of National League third basemen. That'll fire up the real estate market and get things moving again.

Because Scott Rolen and Troy Glaus got traded for each other. And Miguel Cabrera got sent to Detroit, and Ryan Braun is moving to left field. So yeah. They're all changing real estate in one way or another. I get it!

You can kind of see Scott's thought process here. Hey, politics are on the minds of many Americans because it's a presidential election year! So if there's any way I can make a really loose tie-in between a political issue and something happening in sports, I should, right?

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnno.

Displacing the Blame Here, Maybe?

Scott Miller points the finger at Soriano.

Leadoff man Soriano has not been a threat at all, going 0-for-5 in Game 1 and then fanning in each of his first two at-bats in Game 2 before finally collecting a single in the fifth inning. In the two games, he is 2-for-10 with four strikeouts.

Fuck you, Soriano for having 2 hits in 10 ABs. If you were clutch, you would have gotten 2.99 hits like your batting average says you should. Asshole.

Never mind that the team is hitting .179 in the series, that .200 is a higher BA than the team's BA, that Aramis Ramirez is 0-9 with the same number of K's as Fonz, or that Ted Lilly showed the world that he does a fantastic impression of Casey Fossum

for crying out loud

how many goddamn baseball cliches can cbssportsline's scott miller cram into one stinking article? a few weeks ago i wrote this, in which i pointed out how joe morgan loves gushing all over the los angeles angels of anaheim for "not waiting around for the three run homer", "moving runners", and "playing angels baseball." well now that i've seen what scott has to say about the halos, unfortunately i must report that joe isn't alone in loving their gritty gutty approach to the game. let's count scott's angel-loving cliches together. it'll be fun.

the front page teaser, before we even get to the article itself, reads:

1) They don't wait around for three-run home runs. They don't wait around for anything.

this is why the giants are playing so poorly this year- they're waiting around for "anything," unlike the angels who are not. hey giants, if you want to win, get out there and start not waiting, you lazy sons of bitches. (now on to parts and pieces of the actual body of article.)

2) This is an emerging dynasty,

they've won three division titles in the last four years. yup, sign them up for dynastic status. they will certainly be remembered as one of the all time greatest AL west teams from the mid 00s.

3) "We have to get used to beating them because they're going to be here year in and year out," John McLaren, the interim Seattle manager and longtime coach to former Mariners skipper Lou Piniella, said.

as opposed to the a's, who will only be participating in mlb competition every other year from 2008-2017. or the rangers, who will be using a two years on/two years off system during that time period.

4) Most importantly -- and this is no small part of why the Angels could wind up with the game's best record -- they all believe in manager Mike Scioscia's way of doing things.

scioscia's way of doing things. you know- trying to score more runs than your opponent while playing the game of "baseball." good thing the angels believe in this or they'd really be up shit creek.

5) "I remember walking one day with Lou in Peoria (the Mariners' spring training site), and they had two huge buses parked there," McLaren said, noting the oddity because most clubs travel to spring games in one bus. "They were pinch-hitting, running the bases ... they beat us something like 14-1."

i count this as a cliche because of the "pinch hitting, running the bases" part. as if nobody but the angels do this. in fact, it's really alarming teams like the yankees and diamondbacks have had such success this year, considering they don't instruct their players to run the bases. and amazing, the rockies are still in the NL wild card picture despite not using a single pinch hitter yet! at least they've gotten some hilarious at bats out of their relief pitchers.

6) "Afterward, I asked Lou, what was that about? He said, 'They wanted to beat us. They wanted to beat us bad.'"

a continuation of the previous cliche, and one of my favorite sports cliches out there- the oft-used and never relevant "they wanted to win." you think the royals want to win this year? do the red sox just want to win more than anyone else right now? is that why they've got the best record in the league?

7) "We had a lot of young guys in the organization, and the only way to evaluate them was to play 'em," he said.

well, you could always have an arm wrestling tournament with all of them. or maybe a spelling bee.

8) They bid farewell to Bengie Molina two years ago because of the young catching on the way. And anybody who watched Molina with the Giants this summer knows he can still play.

molina did have a good season; i'm not making fun of this statement as if he didn't. i'm just highlighting an underappreciated cliche. of course he can freaking play. he's 32 years old and in good health. he didn't suddenly lose all his ability overnight.

9) "A lot of teams have injuries. It's what you do with them that counts."

thanks garrett anderson. personally, were i the general manager of a baseball team with injuries, i would try to replace the injured players with the best available healthy guys. genius. that's why they pay me the big bucks. got any other story cliches/cliched stories?

10) "I've been on teams that were good but had no depth whatsoever. And that ship didn't sail right."

great. much appreciated. but if your team has no depth, is it really any good?

11) This one does for a couple of reasons: talent, and an aggressive, in-your-face style that is baseball's equivalent of a full-court press.

i'd love to see basketball's version of a sacrifice bunt.

12) "They're a National League club," McLaren said. "They can beat you in a million different ways."

literally, they can beat you exactly one way- by scoring more runs than you. figuratively, i really have a hard time believing you could list 1,000,000 different ways to beat someone at baseball. here, i'll try:

1) wait around for them to wait around for three run homers (note: does not work against angels)
2) steal as many bases as possible
3) go from first to third on all singles
4) utilize hustle, grit, and gristle
5) be david eckstein; if you are not david eckstein, play with as much heart and determination as possible

whew, i'm exhausted. what else is there?

6) want to win more than your opponent

i think that's it. shoot, i came up 999,994 short. getting back to the original point of this post, we need one more cliche for a lucky set of 13. chone figgins, do you want to do the honors? how would you describe your team's approach to the game this year?

13) "It's playing the game. It's playing baseball." (emphasis is scott's/chone's, not mine)

thanks buddy. couldn't have said it better myself. this is not bowling. it's not cribbage. it's motherloving baseball.

Barry Bonds Doesn't Run Fast, So He's Bad At Baseball

Isn't that right, Scott Miller?

Saying bye to Bonds shows that Giants finally mean business

When the premise of an article is that a team giving away the only offensive force in their lineup is a sign of "meaning business", you know you've got a winner. But I mean, Barry is an asshole, right? And that means that his homers actually count as negative runs for the team.

What San Francisco's split with Barry Bonds means is that the baseball people are back in charge of the Giants.

There are about a hundred different threads running through this story, many of them with soap opera twists and controversial turns, but the most important thing for the organization and its fans is that baseball people again will be making baseball decisions.

Keeping the guy with the highest EqA in the world: not a baseball decision.
Cutting ties with aforementioned man: baseball decision.

Thank you, baseball people, for re-taking charge of this baseball team, and letting one of the best baseball hitters hit the baseball free agent market. Baseball.

That sounds patently simple. It isn't. Last winter, general manager Brian Sabean and his people wanted to cut ties with Bonds and begin fixing what they viewed as a flawed roster. The business department, headed by president Larry Baer, wanted Bonds back.

Made sense from the standpoint that Bonds was going to set baseball's all-time home run record this summer. The turnstiles would be clicking and the money would be flowing in.

That was the main reason. The other reason (and the one more relevant to your article) is that he doesn't make an out nearly half the time he comes to the plate.

Didn't make sense from the standpoint of, what are the Giants attempting to do, win or stage a circus?

Is this a sentence?

Everyone knew Bonds, at 43, couldn't play the outfield and was brittle as a saltine. With him, the Giants were going to be older, slower, less athletic and far more one-dimensional.

Mr. Slow, Unathletic, One-Dimensional and Circus-y: 7.4 WARP3
Mr. Multi-Dimensional, Winning, and Athletic: 3.4 WARP3

For the record, saying that keeping Barry Bonds would make the Giants more one-dimensional is bogus and retarded-vagina-ish. Barry Bonds is good primarily at two things: 1) getting on base, and 2) hitting home runs. The Giants are 27th in MLB in HR and 29th in MLB in OBP. How the fuck does losing Barry Bonds make them less one-dimensional? Nay, my friends, nay! Keeping him would INCREASE the quantity of dimensions that this team has!

Scott Miller, you are a moron.

The business people carried the day. This was, as predicted, good news for the bean counters as the Giants played to packed houses both at home and on the road for most of the summer until Bonds hit No. 756. It also was, as predicted, bad news for Sabean, new manager Bruce Bochy and anybody who cared more about Giants W's than individual records.

Find me a left fielder available to the Giants this season that would contribute to more wins than Barry Bonds. I dare you. It certainly isn't fucking Fred Lewis, if that's what you think (man, his life sucks!).

Bonds is batting .279 with 28 home runs and 66 RBI over 125 games and, in his website farewell, writes that the Giants told him that he's "far exceeded" any expectations they had for him this season.

Because he played well and contributed to winning.

That's all well and good, but what's notable is where the expectations were to begin with this spring. At their camp in Scottsdale, Ariz., all you heard was how well Bonds was moving around. He was -- compared to the Willie Mays statue outside of AT&T Park. And almost as if to prove it, Bonds stole a base on opening day. It was almost as if he was staging a public viewing of his quest for the Fountain of Youth.

The Giants would lose that day, 7-0 -- a precursor of many days to come. And as for Bonds' theft, what we now know is this: San Diego couldn't throw out the corpse of Ty Cobb. Of those attempting to steal bases against them this season, the Padres have thrown out only 10 percent. They're about to set a major league record for most stolen bases allowed.

That's pretty valid, but in large part due to Chris Young being absolutely awful at keeping runners on, and he wasn't pitching that day. Also, does anybody know if the Padres have added any bad defensive catchers since the beginning of the season that may have contributed to that stat?

No, Bonds still barely covered any ground in left field and he still was more a threat to clog the base paths than he was to steal 30 bags.

Yeah, and the asshole clogged them 48.3% of the time, because that jerk decided to be an ASSHOLE and clog the bases by getting on base that often. What a cloggy cloghead. Very few people steal 30 bags. I want to literally write a 3-page essay full of shitty metaphors and comparisons about how bad that sentence is. Who cares if he's slow and doesn't steal bases? If he leads THE FUCKING UNIVERSE IN EqA THAT MEANS HE'S STILL THE MOST PRODUCTIVE CARBON-BASED LIFE FORM PER PLATE APPEARANCE.

His power numbers are solid, but they're no longer stratospheric enough to carry a team into the upper division of the standings.

Really? A 1.053 OPS isn't that great? I wasn't aware.

At the time of Friday's news conference to announce the divorce with one of the greatest players in club history, the Giants were 67-86, last in the NL West. Only Florida (66-87) and Pittsburgh (66-88) had worse records in the NL.

This is 100% Barry Bonds's fault. Fuck you, Barry Bonds, for being a terrible baseball player. I can't think of any other reasons why the Giants have such an unproductive offense that doesn't get on base very much other than that Barry Bonds is terrible.

Fuck, there's another page of this crap and I don't really have the time. So one last fun blip.

Third baseman Pedro Feliz has been a middle-of-the-order hitter too often this season. He's Bochy's kind of player, but he's also a No. 6 or 7 hitter in a winning lineup.

Pedro Feliz has a .287 OBP and is a bad offensive player. He's a 6 or 7 hitter in a winning lineup when the team has Sandy Koufax, Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens, Don Drysdale, and Johan Santana in their primes as the starting rotation.

Want to change your mind, maybe, Scott? I expect a full apology for this trashpiece tomorrow.

Alert! There's Been Sightings of Bad Analogies, Bad Jokes, and WRONG!

Scott Miller

Pads' 'Operation' needs Milton Bradley's skills, not his games

Boo! Get off the Stage!

Hey, didn't you hear? Coco Crisp's name sounds like he should be a breakfast food! Yo Crisp! The Red Sox need your skills, not your cereal!

SAN DIEGO -- That Milton Bradley was quietly working a USA Today crossword puzzle at his locker before the start of this week's key NL West series with Arizona is perfect in that six years and five organizations into his major-league career, he remains unsolved and far from completely filled in.

God that's bad. But what if Bradley's a pretty smart dude and had that crossword filled in? I bet he did!

Unfulfilled talent? Troublemaker? Still maturing? Misunderstood?

All of the above?

The hardball Life and Times of Milton Bradley, usually located straddling Sorry! and Ants in the Pants, has moved two spaces, and now it's San Diego that is rolling the dice.

ZOMG! It's almost as if there's some sort of corporation that manufactured those things, and Bradley's name is somehow connected to it!

Even in their Tim Hudson-Jason Giambi-Miguel Tejada heyday, Oakland never advanced to the ALCS. With Bradley last year, they did.

Milton Bradley, 2006 ALDS: 1-13, 1 HR. That HR was a 2-run homer in an 8-3 win. Thank God for Milton fucking Bradley, without whom the A's might never have broken that stupid curse.

"One guy really can make a difference in the lineup," Padres shortstop Khalil Greene says. "Look at Philadelphia with Chase Utley. When he's in the lineup, it changes everything."

I really hope Khalil Greene doesn't think Milton Bradley has anywhere near the same influence as Chase Utley. Like, I really, really hope not. Even given Bradley's awesome last 100 ABs, that's crap.

Since they acquired him from Oakland on June 29, when he's been in the lineup, the switch-hitting Bradley has been to the San Diego lineup -- a lineup that ranks 15th in the NL in on-base percentage, 15th in batting average and 12th in runs scored -- what a hydraulic car lift is for an auto mechanic.

Wow. There you have it. Milton Bradley:Padres :: hydraulic car lift:auto mechanic

Weak. I mean not that it doesn't make sense or anything, it's just wordy and stupid. Tell ya what. In the comments section, leave behind an analogy in the following form.

Milton Bradley:Padres :: (thing):(profession)

Most creative analogy gets my personal thumbs up.

True Yankee Alert!

Scott Miler of Sportsline has this to say in his blog:

What must manager Joe Torre have been thinking in the fifth inning of Saturday's game when second baseman Robinson Cano made a lazy, half-hearted throw to first base after fielding Shawn Green's grounder -- and was stunned when Green beat it out? Hint: Whatever it was Torre was thinking, we'll never know. You want to debate whether Alex Rodriguez is a True Yankee? As great as Cano has been, that's not the nonsense True Yankees ever pulled.

For a moment, Scott had me confused. Capitalizing True Yankee made me think that he was parodying the term after the mention of A-Rod... but the the last sentence convinces me otherwise.

For comparison's sake, let's look at a famous True Yankee, who played his balls off and became so good at Playing the Right Way that he even got to manage the Yankees. Conveniently, he plays the same position as Mr. Cano. Meet Billy Martin. Upon looking up his numbers, I was astounded at how below-average they are. His career OPS+ is 81, and he never had a season over 93. Robinson Cano, in only two seasons, has already managed a season at 132.

Yet if you ask any Lallis on the street, I'm sure Martin is a True Yankee and Cano is not. Apparently, becoming a True Yankee doesn't require greatness. It requires two things: 1. the ability to throw the ball hard from second to first, and 2. a Napoleonic complex.