Jon Heyman shows us the funny

What... what happened here? Reading this made me feel like I stumbled upon a grisly crime scene. Why did he write this? Who edited it? Who approved it for publication? We've seen a lot of terrible attempts at humor but I think this might be the first time I've seen Heyman try his luck at an entire column that is all jokes. Holy God, what a blimp crash.

The Angels didn't attribute the firing of hitting coach Mickey Hatcher after 12-plus years of service to the wishes of their new well-paid singles hitter Albert Pujols. But if these type of changes keep happening, well, we we all suspect that you know who is the one who's really in charge.

Cue up Yakety Sax and whoopie cushion sounds.

Nine Signs Light-Hitting Infielder Albert Pujols is Running the Angels
1. The traditional long-running team insignia, the halo, is replaced by an arch.

GET IT??????

Instead of a halo being alighted on days the Angels win, the arch will glow whenever Pujols gets a ball out of the infield.

Joke #1 about how Albert misses St. Louis, which, besides just being dumb and hacky, also makes little sense given the fact that Pujols seemed perfectly happy to leave the Cardinals. If reports came out that he agonized over the decision, ultimately went with LAA because of family reasons or something, and then was on record as saying it was devastating for him to walk out on the Cardinals, this would merely be a bad attempt at humor based on the assumption that people think replacing the Angels' giant halo with something else would be hilarious. Instead it is both that and not founded in reality, making it even more obtuse. If we start Off to a great start.

2. CIA agents are hired to ensure no sensitive information is leaked from team meetings such as precisely which player proclaimed the team would turn it around.

On one hand, the fact that Pujols was mad about Hatcher's "betrayal" is a little lame considering that Hatcher didn't leak any information that was sensitive or important to the press. (Hey look, this joke actually is founded in reality!) On the other (correct) hand, what Hatcher did was still plenty stupid and plenty unnecessary, considering it pissed off the team's franchise player. And btw HAW HAW HAW CIA AGENTS THAT'S RICH

3. Fans entering Angels stadium will be met by a greeter saying "Bienvenido,'' an homage to Pujols' famous softball-playing father Bienvenido Pujols.

*game show buzzer* *second louder buzzer for racism* Hey, Pujols's dad's name means a word in his native language! You've never met a white guy named "Welcome" have you? Didn't think so.

4. The spread will now be catered by Pujols 5, the St. Louis restaurant.

Joke #2 about how Albert misses St. Louis. And I hate to critique all these jokes with the all caps thing I mostly stole from Drew Magary, because that makes me barely more funny than Jon, but I can't think of a better way to tear down garbage like this than HAW HAW IT'S HIS RESTAURANT, BUT FROM HIS OLD TEAM SO HE PROBABLY LIKES THE FOOD EVEN THOUGH IT'S FROM THE OLD TEAM

Look, I know most of you reading could do better, I'm hardly George Carlin or Chris Rock here. The all caps overexplain the joke bit is all I've got right now. roll with me. I've had a horrific week.

5. The bench coach henceforth serves a dual role as caddy for the avid golfer Albert.

*game show buzzer* Doesn't Rick Reilly have intellectual property rights on all terrible humor that involves golf?

6. The new team name is the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and the Dominican Republic by way of Kansas City.

No buzzer- this is the only joke on this list I will somewhat partially tolerate (relative to the rest of this urea) because "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" is pretty fucking stupid, and whichever marketing whiz came up with it should be beaten with a tire iron.

7. The trade is finally complete: Mike Trout, Peter Bourjos, Erick Aybar, Mark Trumbo, Jered Weaver, Dan Haren, C.J. Wilson, Jordan Walden, Hank Conger and the entire roster of the Salt Lake Bees for Yadier Molina.

THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN

Joke #3 about the team/town that Pujols claims to not miss at all.

8. Agent Dan Lozano is given his own $10-million personal services contract.

This is an incredibly idiotic joke, but the "LOL FAVORITISM TOWARDS AGENTS" aspect is pretty great coming from a guy who spends a good bit of his offseason column space carrying water for the biggest and most powerful agent in the game.

9. Introducing the new manager of the Angels, Jose Oquendo.

Joke #4 premised on a thing that does not exist. But you know what, how great would it be if Pujols got legendary cocktug Mike Scoscia fired? I'm in favor of any sequence of events that produces that outcome.

In conclusion Jon Heyman is probably slightly worse at writing jokes than Bill Simmons.

I'm Back With a Vengeance, Bitches

Sorry about that hiatus there, folks. No one in the media has seemed to care about baseball lately, and nothing egregious was really written about the few trades that have happened so far. But at least I've got my rock, my main dawg, HatGuy, to lean on.

Sorry, but Ramirez was NL's most valuable

No.

Pujols put up big numbers, but midseason acquisition carried Dodgers

Yes. This does not prove thing (1).

If I had an MVP vote in the National League, I’d have given it to Manny Ramirez.

This is one of the 23409234 reasons you do not have a National League MVP vote.

I don’t know how anyone could have voted differently.

1) Using stats
2) Using logic
3) Eliminating completely from consideration players who only played half a year for their respective team and didn't turn in the absolute greatest half season performance of all time
4) Thinking
5) Drawing names out of a hat, and not drawing Ramirez's name

I say this with full appreciation for the season that Albert Pujols had for the Cardinals

You said it with maybe 26% of "full appreciation" of that.

Albert Pujols is a future Hall-of-Famer, barring some disastrous injury. And he just turned in the absolute best season of his career. But here's the kicker, Mikey.

The 2008 Cardinals won more baseball games than the 2008 Dodgers.

If the Cardinals played in the cupcake-y AL West, you'd be preaching to the motherfucking world how Pujols carried his team to the playoffs. Now you're damning him because of the Chicago Cubs, Milwaukee Brewers, Houston Astros, and Jason Isringhausen.

and with awe for the power numbers of Philadelphia’s Ryan Howard.

Or, you know, the 30 or so other people in the NL who played better than Ryan Howard this year. But yeah...Howard...I guess Howard works.

(I am not exaggerating when I say 30. There is a very real chance that I understated it.)

But Manny put the Dodgers in the playoffs all by himself.

Quite a thing to say about a guy who finished 6th on his team in WARP.

(Actually, interesting factoid -- if you narrow the discussion to Ramirez and Ryan Howard, Manny takes the award if you go by WARP.)

There shouldn’t be an argument.

This is the first thing you've said that made sense. Yet here I am. And here you are.

The legend on the award says “Most Valuable Player.”

Ugh, I thought maybe you didn't know! This is difficult for me to figure out, Mikey! You know there's no question who should win the award, and you know what the award is for.....so where....where was this misstep in logic between the correct steps and the correct conclusion? I feel like you're so close....

It doesn’t say “Most Popular Player,”

That's why Pujols won. It was a fucking popularity contest! And Pujols is so popular, that's why no one shut up about how great a season he was having the entire year! Why couldn't people pay some attention to the true greats like Ryan Howard, Josh Hamilton, and K-Rod?

“Thumper of the Year,”

So, you're not taking Ramirez over Pujols for hitting reasons? I hope to God you don't want to talk defense with me.....

“Best All-Around Hitter,”

"Best All-Around Player" would do just fine.....

“Best Season”

STOP!

The award absolutely means "Best Season." You can argue for centuries about what constitutes having the "Best Season." But the award absofuckinglutely belongs to whoever people believe had the "Best Season." You are a fucking idiot.

or “A Really Nice Guy.”

You know, Sean Casey has been winning way too many MVP awards lately.....

It’s about value to a team’s success; nothing else.

And Pujols was more valuable to what success the Cardinals had than what success the Dodgers had. Period. Take Pujols off the Cardinals, they were never once in the playoff discussion. They lose more wins than the Dodgers would have without Manny, especially considering their outfield logjam (say what you will about Juan Pierre, but he's solid in the "4th outfielder" category.)

In my mind, players for teams that don’t at least contend strongly for the playoffs should never win the MVP. If your team finishes down in the standings, how valuable could you be?

If I think hard enough about this, I'm pretty sure if I took that paragraph as true, I could use it to disprove the most basic fundamentals of logic. Like, maybe that syllogisms were fallacies or something.

Okay, so I can't think of one, but check out this pair.

P1) Putting up a comparatively high OPS is valuable.
P2) Player A put up the highest OPS in the world.
C) Therefore, Player A is valuable.

P1) The same Player A plays for a bad team.
P2) Players who play for bad teams are not valuable.
C) Therefore, Player A is not valuable.

To me, the MVP is the player that a contending team could not have lived without.

Okay, fair. The Dodgers won the division by 2 games. There were 19 players on the Dodgers with a WARP of 2.0 or higher. We're going to have to make many copies of this award!

There’s no question that Pujols is the player the Cardinals can least afford to lose, but St. Louis faded from contention in the NL Central by mid-August.

Because their bullpen was the baseball equivalent of your writing. It was not Pujols's fault, so don't deprive him of the hardware, dude!

They finished third

They finished fourth.

(wow)

— a position they probably could have attained even without Pujols’ help.

Stop everything. I have no clue what the hell is going on here. There are a few possibilities.

1) HatGuy does not realize that the Houston Astros exist, and there are only 5 teams in the NL Central. He then believes (probably accurately) that without Pujols, the Cardinals still beat out the Reds.

2) HatGuy thinks that the two teams were actually tied for 3rd, and he also believes that without Pujols, the Cardinals would have wound up tied with the Astros anyway (i.e. Pujols is worth zero wins).

3) HatGuy mixed up the Astros and Cardinals while looking at the standings, and thought the Cardinals had the .5 game lead at the end of the year. This means he thinks Pujols was worth between 0 and 0.5 wins.

4) HatGuy wrote this sentence just so picky, angry nerds like myself would have their blood pressure raised and increase their risk of heart failure.

He's going to kill us all.

My God.....

Ryan Howard has a better claim to the award than Pujols.

Please, if I do not go into work tomorrow, please e-mail HatGuy's column to my boss. The first place he will look for me is the mental asylum, I know it.

The Phillies fought to the season’s last day to win, and Howard saved his best for last, carrying the team down the stretch. In any other year, Howard would be my MVP.

Your two favorite MVP candidates were not even one of the five best players on their respective teams.

But Philly has a powerful lineup, and Howard wasn’t the sole reason the team won.

I can't even try to be funny with this.

NEITHER WAS MOTHERFUCKING RAMIREZ.

Besides, there was a better candidate than Howard, Pujols or Brewer Ryan Braun, the third-place finisher.

Who?

That is Ramirez

Oh.

the only player who can be mentioned with Pujols in discussions of who is the greatest active right-handed hitter in the game.

But you...Yankees obsession...how did you forget.....

Huh?!???!??!?!?!??!?!?

Manny played for the Dodgers for just over two months, and some voters doubtless felt that mitigated against his candidacy.

I am still willing to watch baseball next season because of that fact.

But rather than arguing against his candidacy, the brevity of his service should have argued more forcibly for it.

My God.....

(I've had to say that far too many times in this post than is healthy for my emotional stability.)

The fact that Ramirez played only two months (that's 1/3 of the season) in the league in which you want him to be considered the Most Valuable Player....is an argument in his favor????

I just tried to think of a superlative form of the word "wrong". All I'm coming up with is FWAP. We'll go with FWAP.

FWAP, Mike Celizic! That is pure FWAP!

The facts are incontrovertible.

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Before Manny arrived in L.A., the Dodgers were fighting to play .500 baseball and stay in contention in the game’s worst division. After he arrived, L.A. started playing at a championship level that carried them to the playoffs.

Any player who has a (partially coincidental) positive impact on any team ever should discount anyone anywhere from any sort of any kind of consideration for anything ever.

His stats were absurd: 53 games, 53 RBIs, 17 home runs, 14 doubles, .489 on-base percentage, .396 batting average, .743 slugging percentage.

Those numbers are incredible. Chipper Jones hit .410 through two months. Give him the fucking MVP award.

(Please do not reply with angry comments explaining that Manny's August and September were better than Jones's April and May. I am well aware, and just wish to point out how 2 months can yield really fluky rate stats.....please....PLEASE don't kill me!!!)

If ever one player carried a team to the playoffs, it was Ramirez and the Dodgers. Without him they were a mediocrity. With him, they were division champs.

And....still kind of a mediocrity. They won 84 games in the NL West, which was not the NL Best, if you catch mah da-rift.

I don’t care that he played just two months.

Sentences like this are why you humiliate yourself any time you try to talk about anything.

I do care that he was the reason the Dodgers won. He’s the very definition of an MVP.

I don't want to continue with this. Anyone else notice that he's just saying the same thing over and over again? I'm....I'm actually fresh out of reasons why this guy's wrong! Fresh out!

My God....he wore me out. I thought I could sit here and be sarcastic and angry forever. But I can't! This article is a test of my endurance. I just don't have it!

Unfortunately, too many people think that the MVP should go to the player most responsible for a team’s success

Now there's a lunatic idea.

Haven't you been using this description of MVP to attempt to prove why Manny is the MVP the entire time? Now you're saying it's unfortunate people think like that?

I can't take it anymore. Don't care anymore. GREAT sentence, HatGuy.

— unless somebody has a really phenomenal year for a team that didn’t have much success.

Whatever. Not offensive at all. Don't care that Pujols had a phenomenal year. Let it go. Serenity. Can't let him make me blow a gasket.

Alex Rodriguez once won for being indispensible to the Rangers’ last-place finish, and Ernie Banks once won for distinguished service to another lousy Cubs team.

That's fine. Roll with the punches, logic. Just ride it out. He can't write forever. He'll get sleepy or hungry or something soon. Most likely hungry. For desserts.

The other factor voters consider that they shouldn’t is popularity.

Just....let it go that no one cared that Manny was a dick. Don't worry there Nolesy, hang in there. You don't need to mention that Manny being a jerk was as much a reason for people loving him as hating him by the end of the season.

Give them a chance to punish a guy they don’t like in favor of someone they do, and they’ll take it more often than not. Ted Williams twice lost MVP races to Joe DiMaggio because the voters liked Joe D. better than they liked the Splendid Splinter.

Stuff from the 1940's. Great. Don't worry about it. It's....it's ok. What people did back then is probably relevant, because baseball thinking hasn't advanced at all (at least I think it hasn't). Nothing can make me angry.

Also, the NL MVP award wasn’t about Boston or anything other than who meant the most to the success of his team. And there’s no question about it. Manny’s your man. The fact that he finished fourth is no discredit to him, but to the voters.

You know, even if I'm probably going to hell for writing on this blog and spending so much of my free time disparaging someone I've never met and has honestly caused me no harm whatsoever, it's comforting knowing that ol' Mikey will be right there beside me. He broke the 8th Commandment at least 400 times in this article, and I'm sure there was some adultery or whatnot thrown in there as well.

Come to think of it.....he also worshipped a false god (Manny), did not honor his mother and father (they'd be embarrassed of having a son that can't read the MLB standings and tell others in what place a team finished), stole people's time, coveted more qualified people's MVP votes, raped logic, murdered reason.....

Well heck, at least you didn't write it on a Sunday, didn't take the Lord's name in vain, nor did you make any reference to coveting a woman (interesting....). 3/10 ain't bad, Mike.

This Just In: All Current Baseball Players Suck

Hattigan's up to his old tricks again. The Yankees are in 4th place, so we have to hear about how there aren't any interesting players in baseball.

Baseball is missing must-see players
Pujols, Ortiz are good but not memorable like Bonds, Clemens, McGwire

Oh man, you didn't even make it past the tagline this time without saying something outrageously stupid. Do you know WHY Pujols and others are not consider-....

Hold on....Alfonso Soriano just hit a solo homer to lead off the game, much like other selfish assholes would. I just wanted to absorb that and spend a couple moments hoping Jay Mariotti was watching and thinking about the fact that Jay thinks Soriano should have done something better to help the team....-

ed as memorable as these players??? Albert Pujols is fucking 28 years old. We're not "remembering" him, we're watching him make memories. The dude's averaging over 10 WARP per season for crissake. And what about A-Rod? A-Rod might turn out to be the greatest player ever. Is that not worth watching?

Maybe baseball has spoiled us over the past 10 years. It’s given us too many moments, too many heroes — even if they were flawed heroes — doing too many once-in-a-lifetime things.

Mark McGwire broke the home run record in 1998. Sammy Sosa broke it in the same season. Three years later, Barry Bonds broke that record. Once-in-a-lifetime things.

Remember when ESPN used to interrupt whatever it was broadcasting to show Barry Bonds’ latest at-bat? Remember when we logged into MLB.com to track each pitch that Roger Clemens threw? Remember the home run chase?

Yes, because Barry Bonds was chasing one of the most sacred records in sports. Forgive 25-year-old David Wright if he's not doing that right now.

That stuff about Roger Clemens is absolutely bogus. You just needed more examples. I do the same thing with Carlos Quentin (man, talk about someone playing amazing that no one has said anything about...seriously, I looked at every major sports site's "suprise players" list and never saw his name because they're gushing over Cliff Lee and his megafluke season thus far).

OK, I know that there’s a likelihood that some, if not all, of these guys were getting illicit help. Just the same, from 1998, when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire where chasing down Roger Maris, until last year, when the BALCO Bomber was adding to his all-time home-run total, we’ve had people whose moments on the diamond and in the batter’s box we didn’t want to miss.

Are you saying that there are no superexciting individual players just because there aren't any home run records in danger of falling anytime soon? I shouldn't be excited about A-Rod and Pujols? Quentin? Edinson Volquez (guy has been freakin' awesome!)? The Hammerin' Hebrew Ryan Braun?

When we found out what was going on, we got all over them like green on grass. We were glad when McGwire slunk off into a retirement in which he doesn’t want to talk about the past. We delighted when Sammy disappeared, then came back and couldn’t hit the ball nearly as far or nearly as often.

You wrote an entire column celebrating how impressive his comeback was. Remember?

It’s not as if it’s a bad baseball season. There are plenty of stories to follow, few as remarkable as Chipper Jones’ sustained run of .400-plus hitting and Cliff Lee’s — Cliff Lee? — 6-0 start to the season for Cleveland with an ERA you need an electron scanning microscope to find, and Brandon Webb’s 8-0 start with Arizona.

Okay, take Webb. Why isn't he a "can't miss" pitcher? He's won 8 fucking games in 8 tries. Don't you think that if this continues that Brandon Webb will be a "can't miss" player come August and September? If Chipper Jones is hitting .400 in August, he'll be the type of player that people will schedule bathroom breaks around. This is May. May 14th. Suprisingly few single-season records are in jeopardy on May 14th.

Chase Utley with the Phillies is having an MVP season. The Cubs are in first place and some guy named Fukudome is one of the reasons why. St. Louis is right there with them, thanks to the incomparable Albert Pujols and the surprising Ryan Ludwick.

Incomparable? You just said that those other guys from the past 10 years were way more awesome and memorable than he was!

Greg Maddux has 250 wins and with four more will pass Clemens.

Because this is Celizic, I'm only 85% sure that was a typo.

You should have never pissed off Jeffrey Conway and made him leave to edit Mariotti's garbage.

Manny is closing in on 500 home runs and Junior Griffey is about to hit 600. Florida is the best team in baseball and the team formerly known as the Devil Rays have the AL's third-best record.

Totally uninteresting stuff, right?

So it’s not as if there aren’t a superfluity of reason to watch baseball. But it’s teams we’re watching more than individuals.

Huh? You just mentioned Webb, Lee, Maddux, Jones, Ramirez, Griffey, Pujols, Ludwick, and Utley.......

The individuals are either not compelling personalities or overpowering at what they do. It’s not their fault. I love watching guys like Justin Mourneau and Pujols and Manny and Big Papi hit, but I don’t think most fans plan their evenings around those at-bats.

You are the first person in history to say that David Ortiz is neither a compelling personality nor overpowering at hitting.

Does anyone want to watch Maddux pitch six cagey innings for the pathetic Padres? Maybe Pujols is great, but we don't watch his every at-bat. Same goes for Manny.

This is valid, because at this specific time, these players are not shattering records. But you can't fucking tell me that Pujols isn't exciting because he hasn't done anything like that yet.

After all, 500 homers, like the dollar, aren’t what they used to be. The same goes for Griffey. He’s worth watching, but he’s playing for Cincinnati, and nobody’s showing their games.

ZOMG! ESPN isn't putting the Cincinnati Reds on TV! Griffey isn't interesting!

Besides, 600 homers is also a devalued currency. He may have done it the right way — that’s the perception, at least — but there are five guys with that many ahead of him. When Aaron got to 600, just two had been there before him.

Fuck you Griffey! You should have played baseball in an earlier time!

In another four years, we’ll be watching A-Rod start to chase down Bonds.

But the home runs he's hitting today don't count as much towards that.

We’ll watch Jeter beat him to 3,000 hits

Jeter is at 2398. A-Rod is at 2276. I'm thinking A-Rod gets more hits over the next 4-5 years than Jeter, so this could actually get pretty interesting.

and eventually Pujols will start to reach historic numbers. Maybe someone will one day make a run at the triple crown, and grab out interest that way.


You know, most triple crown frontrunners are typically determined on May 14th. I wonder why one hasn't emerged yet this year.

Bu there aren’t any superhumans out there — at least not yet. The great pitchers don’t strike out 20 a game, or even 15.

Who the fuck in the last 10 years struck out this many guys per game?

And even if someone hits 50 home runs, it’s no longer special. If Ryan Howard or Prince Fielder wants to try a run at 61, we’ll watch the chase, but that’s months — or years — away.

WHO SIMPLY NEEDED TO SEE MARK MCGWIRE OR SAMMY SOSA'S EVERY AT-BAT ON MAY 14TH IN 2008???

For the moment, it’s the teams, not the players. The biggest draw in baseball is not Bonds or Clemens; it’s the Boston Red Sox. After them are the Yankees. The Cubs cause a stir wherever they go.

Or, for people who give a shit about things besides how big of a city a team plays in, the Diamondbacks and Rays are pretty damn exciting too.

The game is still great, but it’s games we watch now, not moments. That’s not necessarily bad, but it sure is different.

This is a totally false and stupid generalization that assumes the way you think is the way the world thinks about baseball.

There’s still time to sign Barry.

Yeah. Have the Tampa Bay Rays sign Barry Bonds. Then I bet that baseball fans everywhere will need to see Barry's every at-bat and ESPN will start showing tons of Rays games, because Bonds has this superhuman presence that no players today have that makes people give a shit about his every move when he's NOT chasing a record. False, sir. Fucking FALSE. When Bonds isn't on the verge of breaking records, people care about how he's hitting just as much as they do any other of the game's great hitters.

I'm getting tired of your stupid "here's what people care about right now in sports" columns. Stop it. Just stop.