Grantland has another MLB guy besides Jonah Keri. He's a dumbshit.

[Edited to change my comments on this bozo's Nationals 2B situation analysis.  He's a bozo.  I'm a bozo.  We're all bozos.]

Before I get into this though, you know what I noticed while cruising around Bill Simmons's Grantland Brought To You By Bill Simmons And Edited By Bill Simmons By Which I Mean Not Edited At All?  Bill did part 1 of his NBA trade value column back in late January, and hasn't done part 2 yet.  (There's a disclaimer at the end of part 1 that says part 2 will happen after the Super Bowl.)  This asshole is just as lazy as I am!  Holy shit, how do you let yourself get away with that as the EIC of a major content mill?  "Yeah, I just kind of set my own deadlines and then I don't stick to them, because I had some podcasts and TV work to do."  Sure, I do that all the time around here.  I also don't make a dime from this, and have another job to work in order to make dimes.  Fuck you, Bill.  I'll start working on that trade value column next week.  (Seriously!  I will!)

In the meantime, as I've said many many times, I don't really mind Jonah Keri that much.  But today I stumbled across an MLB spring training preview piece written by some diptard named Michael Baumann.  As you'll see when you start to read it, this isn't really meant to be taken as 100% serious analysis.  There's a decent number of "jokes" and a medium amount of whimsical bullshit.  But you'll also see that Michael actually does take his baseball knowledge seriously.  And that's why I'm writing this post.  Michael is also, according to his mini-bio, "author of the upcoming book Philadelphia Phenoms: The Most Amazing Athletes to Play in the City of Brotherly Love, due in November 2014."  This will be relevant later, when I get butthurt about what he says about my favorite team.  Away we go.

Yesterday, I listed the pressing spring training question facing each American League team. 

And don't think I won't take a shot at that if I get positive feedback on this post, buster.

Today, it’s the National League’s turn. 

Can't believe Simmons is paying someone to write about AAAA baseball lololololololol

I hope his AL-only keeper league has disbanded due to everyone in it realizing what a turd Bill is.

Here’s hoping we get some resolution by Opening Day! 

You sound like you're writing for Bleacher Report when you start an article like that!

Arizona Diamondbacks: Is Archie Bradley Archie Bradley again?

Excellent non-question.

Diamondbacks fans don’t have much to feel optimistic about, but that could change if Bradley, arguably the top pitching prospect in the game a year ago, 

Sure, but that was coming off of his 20 year old season spent at AA ball.  Even if he had been awesome in the minors in 2014, he probably wouldn't be slated for a callup until late this summer at the earliest.  As things stand, there's no way he's in Phoenix before 2016.  Not sure why this would be a really exciting spring training question.

bounces back from the injuries that derailed his 2014 campaign. 

Even during his awesome 2013 season, he still had a BB/9 over 4.  He needs a little more work.

Those ailments led to ineffectiveness and mechanical inconsistency, and so the cycle goes, but a healthy, effective Bradley has the potential to be the team’s best homegrown pitcher since Brandon Webb. 

Webb was never even any kind of elite prospect--he was an 8th round pick who didn't debut in the majors until he was 24, and had little minor league track record of dominance.  Those lucky assholes in Arizona. 

We’ll get a sense of his progress in camp. 

I know the Diamondbacks are going to suck this year, but I'm pretty sure you could have come up with something better than this angle.  Christ, just note that Paul Goldschmidt had an amazing 2013 and then just a really good 2014 and ask if he can get back to being an MVP candidate.

Atlanta Braves: How do Nick Markakis and Melvin (yes, Melvin) Upton look?

SO HILARIOUS AND INTERESTING THAT THIS TERRIBLE PLAYER WHO WILL BE OUT OF MLB IN A COUPLE OF YEARS DECIDED TO GO BY A DIFFERENT NAME.  I'M NOT AT ALL SICK OF HEARING ABOUT IT YET.  Christ.  If Upton played in New York or Boston this would be the biggest story in the game for the next six weeks.  Let's all count our blessings that this isn't the case.

After liquidating Jason Heyward, Evan Gattis, and Justin Upton, 

Eh, they got Shelby Miller for Heyward, but I'll grant that "liquidating" is an accurate verb as to what they did with Gattis and Upton.

the Braves brought in Markakis to play right field on a four-year, $44 million contract, which is weird, because that seems like a lot to give a 31-year-old corner outfielder who doesn’t hit for power and needed offseason neck surgery. 

Well, take a little trip on the Google machine and try "Braves new stadium racism."  Here's a great start!  It shouldn't be a surprise that they're doing a mini-rebuild that crafts a team, ahem, a little more in the image of their target fan demographic.

Even if he’s not 100 percent to start the season, though, Markakis can’t possibly be more disappointing than the newly christened Melvin Upton. 

WAIT DID HE CHANGE HIS NAME I DIDN'T HEAR!

It’s hard not to feel bad for Upton at this point, 

He is on a $75MM contract, and his problems at the plate are a result of his failure to change his approach once pitchers stopped throwing him fastballs.  Stuff your sorries for MELVIN in a sack, Michael.

but maybe something will finally click this spring and he’ll return to something approaching his former glory.

Doubtful.

Chicago Cubs: Who are those guys with the jersey numbers in the 70s?

Maybe they play offensive line for the Bears lol!!!!!

Adding ace Jon Lester and veteran outfielder Dexter Fowler will help the Cubs in the short term, but the buzz building around the franchise is largely based on Chicago amassing, in scientific terms, a butt load of young position players. 

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

We saw Javier Baez, Arismendy Alcantara, and Jorge Soler for the first time last year, 

All three of these guys could become good players, although Baez (admittedly the one with the highest pedigree) struck out in more than 40% of his PAs last year.  Obviously that will have to change.

and here’s a partial list of the nonroster invitees who will get a crack at major league camp: Addison Russell, Kris Bryant, Albert Almora, and Kyle Schwarber. 

True, this is regarded by pretty much everyone as the best farm system in baseball for good reason.  Now watch the Cubs find a way to royally fuck it up.

Also new to the team and sporting a number in the 70s: Joe Maddon, in case all the commotion made you forget that Chicago also added the game’s best manager this offseason. 

/Larry B adds "managers don't do that much" tag to post

The Cubs are either another year or another big trade away from making a run at the playoffs, but right now, this team is where the Nationals were four years ago. 

Hopefully they are leading the division in July, get greedy and deplete the farm system by trading for some rental player at the trade deadline, lose in the divisional round, and go back to sucking.  Doesn't sound like something Theo Epstein would do, but I can dream.

Cincinnati Reds: Can this team prove that the complex interpersonal relationships surrounding baseball are more interesting than the game itself?

No, because that premise only holds any water if you're a boring idiot who doesn't actually care about sports.

I make no secret of how profoundly boring I find exhibition baseball, 

Whoa, don't go too far out on that limb!  Most baseball fans, especially die hard baseball fans, find ST games RIVETING.

but the first week of Reds camp has shown that spring training can be interesting if you don’t pay attention to the games. Would I watch a matchmaking show about pitchers picking throwing partners in the style of a turn-of-the-century MTV dating program? Yes. 

WHO SAYS NO

Was the highlight of the preseason Mat Latos not only burning the bridge he just crossed to leave Cincinnati, but rigging it to explode in a shower of glitter and flower petals? It was, until out of nowhere, in came Marlon Byrd — who wasn’t even on the Reds last year — off the top rope to fire back at Latos. I’m so drunk on human drama I can’t keep my metaphors straight.

More interested in gossip than actual events that affect the outcome of games/seasons?  You're fitting right in at ESPN, buddy.  Good job.

Colorado Rockies: Y’all want a hug?

Fuck you, no they don't.  (This is where I get butthurt, as referenced earlier.)

I’m serious. I spent forever trying to give Rockies fans a reason to be optimistic other than “Maybe Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez won’t get hurt this year?” but I struck out.

Well, they have some actually-relevant-like-not-just-relevant-to-Rockies-fans young players like Nolan Arenado, Corey Dickerson and (maybe, fingers crossed) Tyler Matzek.   That's still a fair point--they will probably suck this year.  HOWEVA.  Here's where I lose my shit.

The Rockies are going to be bad again, and unlike other similarly bad teams, they don’t have a great chance of bouncing off rock bottom and back into contention thanks to their farm system or front office.

Oh, really?  Interesting--there is a pretty good consensus out there, from Keith Law (who I hate, but who knows prospects and farm systems very well thank you very much) on down, that the Rockies have a top 10 farm system.  I see that you are apparently a Philadelphia native, sir, and therefore likely a Phillies fan.  How are they doing these days?  What's that?  Just as shitty as the Rockies?  Interesting--they appear to also have, by most accounts, a bottom 10 farm system.  Can't wait for that Ryan Howard contract to finally come off the books in two seasons though!  Go fuck yourself, needledick.

But hey, Coors Field is lovely. I haven’t seen such a beautiful building filled with so much garbage since my last trip to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, though.

OH ZING WOW.  MODERN ART BURN. 

I hope the Phillies never win another game.

Los Angeles Dodgers: How weird is it going to be to see Jimmy Rollins and Howie Kendrick in Dodger uniforms?

Ooh, this guy has learned well from Simmons.  "How [noteworthy/interesting/weird] is [thing that isn't noteworthy/interesting/weird]?" has been a Bill staple for more than a decade now.

The Dodgers now have a pair of very experienced, very good two-way middle infielders in Rollins and Kendrick, 

Good to see him carrying water for former Phillie Rollins, who did have a good 2014, but was terrible in 2012 and 2013 and is on the wrong side of 35.  I'm sure the Dodgers won't miss Hanley Ramirez at all.

both of whom come from extremely stable double-play combinations (Rollins with Chase Utley since 2005, Kendrick with Erick Aybar since 2007). This spring, they’ll have to develop that kind of chemistry with each other. 

That's your spring training angle for this team?  This World Series contender, with the best pitcher in the game and one of the most interesting and talented young position players around?  Their new 2B and SS need to develop "chemistry?"  Hmm.  Arizona preview = boring.  Colorado preview = inaccurate.  Dodgers preview = boring.  Excuse me while I cry myself a river, but I've got a vague idea that perhaps Michael doesn't really give a flying shit about things that happen west of Pittsburgh.  We'll see what he does for the Giants and Padres.

Truthfully, though, the adjustment probably won’t be as hard on them as it will be on the fans; it’ll probably be June or July before seeing these guys in Dodger blue stops being jarringly weird.

GOD IT'S SO WEIRD THAT GUYS SWITCH TEAMS ISN'T IT?  SO WEIRD.  SPECIFICALLY WITH REGARD TO J-ROLL, WHO EVERYONE AGREES IS AS PHILADELPHIAN AS THE LIBERTY BELL AND CASUAL RACISM.

Miami Marlins: How is the Mighty Giancarlo Stanton’s Face?

I'm sure it's fine.

The big questions for Miami’s playoff hopes (when will Jose Fernandez come back? Is Dee Gordon actually good? What’s Christian Yelich’s ceiling?) can’t be answered in the spring. 

Uh, the last two of those sort of can.  Hell, all three of them sort of can.  I'm not going to look it up but I'm sure Fernandez is at spring training, going through rehab.  He had his surgery last May and was throwing by September.  He'll probably be ready for game action in the minors soon after the regular season starts.

But we haven’t seen TMGS take a swing in game action since Mike Fiers hit him in the face with a baseball in September. It’s overwhelmingly likely that he’s fine, 

Because that was a freak accident and baseball players get hit with pitches all the time, and you don't need your face to hit or throw, for fuck's sake it's not like the guy tore his hamstring or broke his back or something.

because the Marlins wouldn’t have signed him to a $325 million extension if they didn’t think he was, but I won’t be able to relax completely until he hits his first home run. 

What the fuck are you talking about?  Do you know what baseball is?

Milwaukee Brewers: What critter will the Brew Crew find at the ballpark this year?

OK, admittedly, drivel like this makes my criticism of his blurbs that seem to contain actual analysis feel a little out of place.  I don't care, it's my blog and if you don't like it I'm taking my ball and leaving.

The highlight of last season — yes, including Jonathan Lucroy’s insane breakout performance — was the emergence of Hank, a stray bichon frise mix who wandered into the team’s spring training facility and became the Brewers’ unofficial mascot. 

That was a highlight of last season on par with Lucroy's performance for Brewers fans under the age of 10 and over the age of 90.  Everyone else, I'm sure, was much more interested in Lucroy than a dog.

Hank was adopted by Brewers executive Marti Wronski, leaving a spot open for another animal to sneak into Maryvale Park and, from there, into our hearts. I’m rooting for a sheep this year.

Awesome joke.

New York Mets: Is it time for Thor? WE WANT THOR! WE WANT THOR!

I left that link in on purpose--I guess Mets fans refer to Noah Syndergaard as "Thor."  Mets fans are fucking idiots and I've never met one I liked.  This does not change that.

“You know, between Jacob deGrom, Zack Wheeler, and Bartolo Colon, the Mets have a decent rotation. Matt Harvey’s throwing again — I don’t think you guys need to rush Noah Syndergaard to the maj—”

[A terrifying, baseball-headed man bursts through the wall, followed by a mob of blue-and-orange-clad villagers.] “WE WANT THOR! WE WANT THOR!” 

You know, that's less unfunny than most of Simmons's little imaginary dialogues.  Points for trying.

Philadelphia Phillies: Are the broken pitchers still broken?

Chad Billingsley and Cliff Lee would’ve made a great one-two punch in 2008, yet in 2015, the best-case scenario for the Phillies involves both returning to health. 

Sure, their current roster is a garbage fire past old-ass Chase Utley, "please trade me now" Cole Hamels and injured-ass Cliff Lee, and they have hands down the WORST front office in MLB, but totally, that's the big question this spring--can Lee and Chad Billingsley pitch up to expectations?  If they do, this team might win 75 games!

This team probably wouldn’t go anywhere even if both pitchers could return to their 2008 form, 

It sure as fuck wouldn't.

but both would make for attractive trade chips come midseason if would-be trade partners were convinced they’d stand up to a playoff run. 

Yeah, Ruben Amaro Jr. might be able to turn them into a couple bags of magic beans.  Phight on!

Pittsburgh Pirates: What can the Bucs expect from Jung Ho Kang?

What's this?  Relevant analysis that's more or less on point?

Spring training will be our first extended look at Kang, a 27-year-old South Korean infielder who arrived in Pittsburgh this offseason. With only $16 million invested in Kang, and Neil Walker and Jordy Mercer and Josh Harrison already in the fold, the Pirates don’t need Kang to perform, but it’d sure be nice if he did. 

My God!  It is!  Who ghost-wrote this section for him?

Translating performance in the Korean Baseball Organization to MLB is still very much an inexact science, 

Oof, I don't hate the Pirates, but that translation is "an inexact science" in the sense that "the KBO is significantly worse than the NPB, and even the best players from the NPB often struggle to transition to MLB, sooooo....."

so even a few dozen spring at-bats should help the Pirates get a better idea of the kind of player they’ve bought. 

Fair enough.

San Diego Padres: Who’s going to play center field?

Hmmm.  After those Diamondbacks/Rockies/Dodgers blurbs, I was hoping this would say "Haha will the Padres be too distracted by San Diego's beautiful weather to have a good season?"  This is still a pretty dumb question, but it's made less dumb by the fact that Petco's CF is gigantic.

Contrary to popular opinion, going to war with three outfielders who fall just short of being able to play center field isn’t a season-killer. 

I... I don't think that's popular opinion.

The Dodgers, Cardinals, and Nationals have all won division titles without a real center fielder in recent years, though in all cases, that was a temporary solution. 

"Popular opinion, which no one actually subscribes to due to these very recent and obvious counterexamples..."

Right now, it looks like Wil Myers is going to play center field for San Diego, though if he doesn’t bounce back from a down sophomore season, it might be time to have a serious talk about whether Cameron Maybin, if healthy, can do enough on defense to be the more productive player overall. 

Maybin has a career 87 OPS+ in 2000 PA, and it's significantly worse than that since 2012.  It's time to stop thinking of him as a starter no matter how good his glove is.  Myers was rotten last year, but come on, he's got to be better than Maybin or the Padres just spent a bunch of money for no good reason.

San Francisco Giants: Do you think wearing three World Series rings at once looks tacky?

THERE we go.  There's the "other side of the country" analysis I expected.

PS--fuck the Giants

There’s not much to worry about here, since the Giants return almost everyone from the pretty well-rounded, veteran team that won the World Series last year. 

Oh for fuck's sake, come on.  This was an 88 win team that wouldn't have even made the playoffs prior to the second wild card being added in 2012.  They backed in, and then won it all because playoff baseball is much different than regular season baseball and Madison Bumgarner went apeshit.  Outside of Posey and Pence, the offense is a total joke.  If they don't get amazingly strong late career performances from Hudson and Peavy again, they're going to be an 84 win team that plays golf in October instead of what they were last year.  Some of this is sour grapes, but go on, convince me that there's "not much to worry about" for a team with this many old pitchers and shitty hitters. 

Some might worry about the downgrade from Pablo Sandoval to Casey McGehee at third base, but that’ll largely be offset by signee Nori Aoki filling the Mike Morse–size defensive hole in left field. 

Except that Aoki was awful on defense last year too, and unlike Morse, he can't hit for shit.  McGehee was a nice story last year but I'll be shocked if he can replicate Sandoval's numbers.  This team is going to score even fewer runs than they did last year, and I don't see that working out for them unless Bumgarner makes like 50 starts.

Now, watch them win 88 games and a wild card again, thanks to twenty walk off wins on infield singles at home and twenty 2-1 road wins where the other team strands like a million baserunners and the Giants get both their runs on a walk-error-bloop opposite field double sequence.

I see no reason why the Giants won’t be good again in 2015, then go on to win the World Series again in 2016.

Fuck the Giants.

St. Louis Cardinals: Will a change of scenery do Jason Heyward good?

Well, even though his power seems to be eroding as he enters his mid 20s (huh?) he was still worth 6.3 rWAR last year.  So I'm not sure he needed a change.

Heyward isn’t the player we’d hoped he’d be when he came up, but he’s already one of the top outfielders in the National League, and he’s still only 25. A shoulder injury he suffered as a second-year player kicked off a never-ending cycle of swing tinkering that seemed to limit his offensive potential, a theory Heyward himself spoke about after arriving in Cardinals camp. 

Big story here: player hasn't been playing well; blames nagging injury.

If Heyward doesn’t improve one bit, he’ll be a massive addition for St. Louis. 

Correct.

But if he meshes better with the coaching staff in St. Louis than he did in Atlanta and turns into a monster power hitter, we could see a breakout season of biblical proportions.

I have a hard time seeing him go from 14 HR to 11 HR to "monster power hitter" in three seasons, but he is really really good.  Knowing the Cardinals, he'll hit 40 this year.

Washington Nationals: How will Danny Espinosa do against righties?

No.  No.  A thousand times no.  This is not one of the fifty most pressing questions facing the Nationals this spring.  Espinosa has less than 500 PA in the last two seasons combined, because he can't fucking hit.  I'm sure failing at switch hitting is a big part of that, but who cares?  The Nationals traded for Yunel Escobar this offseason, and he's going to start.  Whether Bryce Harper RESPECTS THE GAME ENOUGH is a more pressing question than whether Espinosa can hit righties from the right side.

There aren’t many guys who have 20–home run power, 20-steal speed, and the ability to play above-average middle infield defense. Espinosa is one of them. 

And the Nationals don't need or want him to be one of them anymore, because they're trying to win right now.  Thus, he is a bench player, and thus, there are no pressing questions about him.

The problem is that though the switch-hitting Espinosa hit .301/.374/.485 while batting right-handed last year, he hit only .183/.241/.291 from the left side, which, given the prevalence of right-handed pitching, he did twice as often. 

He still only had 364 PAs, because for a lot of the season the Nationals tried to keep Zimmerman at 3B and Rendon at 2B.

Therefore, in addition to growing a stupendous, Jeff Daniels–in-Gettysburg mustache, 

NEW COLUMN IDEA: WHICH MLB PLAYER'S MUSTACHE IS BEST EXPLAINED BY EACH 2015 BEST PICTURE NOMINEE.

Espinosa is toying with the idea of giving up switch hitting. It’ll be very interesting to see how well that experiment works, and how long he sticks with it.

Michael Baumann sucks.

Narratives: for people who hate thinking

No TMQR right now although I may post something on Friday.  In the meantime, I want to point out that like most Boston sports fans, Jackie MacMullen HATES thinking.

It was the ideal confluence of personalities, 

Because they won the division.

and not just because they succeeded, in concert, at sprouting mounds of facial hair.

Right--it was an ideal confluence of personalities because they won the divisiion.  Had the 2013 Red Sox had a good-not-great season, maybe gone 85-77, you would not in a million years have identified them as an ideal anything.

Long before that, there was an underlying vibe percolating among ownership, the front office, the manager and the players.

That's right--the 2012 Red Sox had a shitty season.  But it couldn't have been because of the fact that they had shitty players like Mike Aviles, Aaron Cook, Alfredo Aceves and Daisuke Matsuzaka playing major roles.  It couldn't have been that Jacoby Ellsbury and Carl Crawford were too hurt to contribute.  It couldn't have been that Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Daniel Nava hadn't figured out how to hit like they would end up hitting in 2013, or that Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester had down years because sometimes pitchers have down years.  No, none of those things.  It was the VIBE.  It was that the team didn't really believe in itself.  It was Bobby Valentine's fault.  Whatever it was, it sure wasn't just that the team had shittier players, worse luck and more injuries than the 2013 team.  If you're going to be a buttass sportswriter like Jackie MacMullen, you've got to credit a team's success/failure to magic/lack of magic, knowing how to win/not knowing how to win, and having fun/not having fun.  That's what the populace likes to read about, after all.

They had been champions, most of them, 

Other than Cody Ross, no one important had been a champion for at least five seasons.  Some of them had been on the 2007 World Series team.  Like, 10 of them.  The rest of them had never been champions.

idolized and adored by a faithful brethren. 

That's horrible writing.

But when it started breaking bad, 

OOOOOOOOOOO! TOPICAL!

the fallout was swift, vicious, unforgiving. 

FACK THE SAWX!  I NEVAH LIKED THEM ANYWAYS!  HOW LONG UNTIL BROONS SEASON?

Disappointment evolved into outrage, which led to the unkindest cut of all -- indifference.

Also known as "fairweatherism."

And so the Red Sox were left with an ownership that was viewed as disingenuous, 

Because it is, but to be fair, every ownership group in pro sports is disingenuous.

a roster that was dismissed as entitled, 

It wasn't, it was just bad, but again, narratives are more fun that facts.

a general manager who was perceived as undermined and a manager who limped back to Boston nursing the wounds of a two-year stint in Toronto that was both underwhelming and disconcerting.

I haven't even read this article yet (starting doing this breakdown without reading because I knew from the headline that it was going to be horrendous), but I'm guess John Farrell gets about 75% of the credit for the fact that the 2013 Red Sox won 28 more games than the 2012 Red Sox.

Together they shared a glittery portfolio, 

What?  Do you know what metaphors are?  Have you ever used them before?

yet they also shared the burden that comes with squandering sustained excellence: something to prove.

This is worse than Mariotti's writing.

That sentiment was also a common thread among the new faces. There was Gold Glove winner Shane Victorino, spurned by his beloved Phillies and swapped to the dysfunctional Dodgers, where Victorino floundered. 

But wait--the 2013 Dodgers had a huge turnaround of their own, after letting Victorino go in the offseason!  How do you explain it--if he was a key missing piece for the 2013 Red Sox, shouldn't the 2013 Dodgers have missed him?  THE NARRATIVE IS FALLING APART ABANDON SHIP

Mike Napoli came as a free agent from Texas, where he batted a paltry .227 the season before. A hip issue nullified his 3-year, $39 million deal, leaving him with a one-year $5 million contract and a resolve to show the Sox he was worth every penny of the original contract.

Yes, he batted a paltry .227 the year before, because his hip was fucked up.  Now it's healthy (although he still only batted a shitty .259, which doesn't matter because batting average is stupid, etc., etc.).

Stephen Drew came in the wake of a lackluster season split between Arizona and Oakland, where he batted .223 with 7 homers and 28 RBIs.

He only had to outperform Mike Aviles.  That's not exactly a high-pressure situation.

GM Ben Cherington said adding personnel that had redemption in mind was not by design; 

Jesus, I hope not.  No GM should be adding personnel with more than a passing thought to whether the players "have redemption in mind."

he was focused on specific skill attributes and players who looked at Boston and "saw it as an opportunity and not a burden.''

I think Cherrington is probably pretty smart, so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that last part is just a little scrap he threw MacMullen for the sake of her article.  I think roughly 99% of his focus was probably on adding players who are better at baseball than the 2012 players they replaced.

Jonny Gomes was one such player. 

Jonny Gomes is awesome at hitting left handed pitching.  This season, he started in LF against LHPs and played well.  In 2012, the Red Sox LFs were Daniel Nava (nominally a switch hitter but terrible against LHPs throughout his career so far), Scott Podsednik (lefty), Carl Crawford (lefty) and Darnell McDonald (terrible at hitting baseballs under any circumstances).  Gomes made the team better, not because of his vibe, or his will to win, but because of a skill he has.  See how that works?

He said a primary reason he inked with the Sox was the number of accomplished veterans on the roster who were under fire and motivated to re-establish themselves (you can safely assume the 2-year, $10 million contract had something to do with Gomes' decision as well).

Analysis that means nothing, considering pretty much every team in the league has accomplished veterans coming off of a bad year every season (followed by parenthetical with factual information that actually explains why Gomes came to Boston).

"I told my agent, 'Call the Sox. We need to go there,' '' said Gomes. "Because I knew those guys were going to have a huge chip on their shoulder. I knew the way they were going to approach the season, and I wanted to be part of it.''

See, it's not totally fair for me to rake writers like MacMullen over the coals for their shitty writing--the sound bites given by players reinforce this narrative-driven bullshit.  Then again, maybe the players spout narrative-driven bullshit because the writers write about it, so it is the writers' fault after all.  Regardless, I know this much is true: there are very few people in America who can do what Jonny Gomes does better than he can.  There are a whole shitload of people in America who can do what Jackie MacMullen does better than she can.  So I'm going to go ahead and go after the person here who can (and should) be replaced by someone who doesn't peddle this nonsense.

Nobody fit that profile more snugly than Jon Lester, who had morphed from one of the most feared left-handed pitchers in the game to a symbol of everything that was wrong with the Boston Red Sox. Lester was pegged as a card-carrying member of the chicken-and-beer fraternity 

Holy fucking fuckballs.  One of these years, THE JILTED VICTIMS of CHICKEN AND BEER NATION will get over that little gem of a non-story.  We can only hope it's this year.  NEVER FORGET, SOX FANS.  NEVER FORGET.

/Sarah McLachlan plays over slow motion video of Bobby Valentine walking to the mound and taking the ball from Josh Beckett

that contributed to the stunning collapse in 2011. His struggles on the mound continued in 2012, and his career appeared to be at a crossroads.

It appeared to be?  We aren't even sure if we want to use that figure of speech?  Come on Jackie, show some spunk.  Get out there and COMMIT to the idea that Lester's career was at a crossroads.  Also, not to be too factual about any of this, but he did post career highs in BABIP and HR/FB in 2012.  Now I'm not saying that those struggles were entirely due to luck, or that they had nothing to do with whether he liked drinking beer on nights when he wasn't starting during 2011.  I'm just saying they were probably MOSTLY due to luck, and also, that they had not a fucking thing to do with whether he liked drinking beer on nights when he wasn't starting during 2011.

Catcher David Ross came to Fenway last summer with the Atlanta Braves. Lester threw against them on June 22, giving up 10 hits and three runs in seven innings of a 4-1 Sox loss.

"It didn't make sense to me," Ross said. "He was throwing hard, he wasn't injured ... I figured, 'He needs someone to point him in the right direction.' "

Lester went winless in his last five starts and finished with a 9-14 record and a 4.94 ERA.

Another case of players pushing the narratives that writers then push.  Pretty embarrassing for all, really.  Also, how the fuck would a player on another team know whether Lester was injured or not?  Maybe he was.  That's at least one plausible reason why he was so horrible.  His career ERA through 2011 was 3.53.  He was a run and a half worse in 2012, but David Ross said that after seeing Lester once, in a game Ross did not even record a plate appearance, he knew that everything was fine with Lester mechanically.  That's great stuff.  Why is this even in this article?  Is David Ross the only Red Sox player who MacMullen could get ahold of to comment on this story?

When the Red Sox began courting Ross, he inquired about Lester and his ineffectiveness, about Lackey and his surgically repaired arm, about Clay Buchholz and his durability. Farrell said all three needed some mechanical adjustment as well as a reboot mentally.

David Ross, June 2012: "Jon Lester has no mechanical problems."
John Farrell, to David Ross, 2012-2013 offseason: "Jon Lester needs some mechanical adjustments."
David Ross, to Jackie MacMullen, September 2013: "The problem with Lester was that he needed someone to point him in the right direction."

Maybe by "point him in the right direction," Ross meant literally, as in make an adjustment to point his body in the right direction while he pitches.  Pro athletes are fucking idiots.

"The first time I caught Lester's bullpen, I told him, 'Hey man, when your ball is up, it's flat. When it's down in the zone, it jumps out of your hand,' " said Ross.

Lester listened closely. Ross found him to be earnest, disciplined and humble.

Why, what a coincidence!  That's EXACTLY how stuffy old white dudes who read the work of writers like Jackie MacMullen like their athletes to be!

"I caught him in spring training and he threw five innings of no-hit ball," Ross said. "I went back and told my buddies, 'We've got nothing to worry about.' ''

"After he dominated the Mets' AAA lineup, I knew it was going to be an awesome season."

Indeed, what was overlooked amid the bitterness toward the downtrodden 2012 Sox was the one undeniable mantra in baseball: Pitching cures all.

Easy now.  We're starting to drift into the world of real, actual analysis.  Let's get back to the narrative soon please.

Lackey, who was recovering from Tommy John surgery, rededicated himself to his craft and reported to camp with a svelte physique

BEST SHAPE OF HIS LIFE!

and a steady diet of rejuvenated fastballs and sliders.

Lackey insists he did "nothing different, nothing special" in preparation for 2013.

"Everything is a little overblown here,'' Lackey said. "We've got guys who have done it for a long time with a pretty good track record.

Wow, that's pretty levelheaded analysis from a guy who looks like a caveman.  Putting aside inappropriate remarks about Lackey's physical appearance, I'm glad SOMEone quoted in this article is here to tell us "Yeah, it's not that big of a deal, we kind of had a down year in 2012, but we knew we'd play better in 2013."

"People were giving Lester hell, and he had the best winning percentage in the history of baseball. That's kind of ridiculous.''

OH NOEZ PITCHING WINZ IS BAD STATISTIC.  But he's got a point anyways.

Yet Cherington, born and raised in New England, 

That's like catnip to Red Sox fans.  HE'S ONE OF US!  HE KNOWS US!  JUST LIKE I'M A LIFELONG SAWX FAN FROM MINNESOTA BY WAY OF TEXAS, CHAHHHRINGTAWN IS 100% BOSTON!

understood exactly where the criticism stemmed from.

The fact that Lester pitched like ass in 2012?

"When a pitching staff performs the way ours did last year and the end of the previous season, 

NEVER FORGET

I think it's more than fair to critique and to have a skeptical eye,'' Cherington said. "We knew we needed to be better. We knew we had the pieces, but there were certain technical things that needed to be rectified, as well as other issues.

Things Cherington didn't name: a need for more players with something to prove.

"What John and his staff have done so well is … [they have] allowed everyone's energy to be focused on the field. It sounds easy in December, but it's harder to implement during a long season," Cherington said.

"It's had a great impact on the team, to have all our mental energy focused in a productive way.''

Again, hoping this was just Cherington throwing MacMullen a bone.  Although now I'm not so sure.

Ross picked up on the "redeem team" vibe from the moment he stepped into the clubhouse.

Whew!  Enough actual analysis; let's get back to the VIBE.

"There was a whole lot of motivation in this room,'' Ross concurred. "Lester had something to prove. Lackey did too -- big time. Buchholz, even Pedey... 

I assume that's Pedroia but it's kind of hard to tell.  Also, when written that way (and when said out loud, given the most likely pronounciation), it makes their second baseman sound like a sex criminal.

when I got here, Dustin told me, 'I've never been on a losing team in my whole life.' He took it personally. He was going to do something about it.''

2012 Pedroia: 114 OPS+, 4.9 WAR
2013 Pedroia: 116 OPS+, 6.5 WAR

Sounds like he did something about it to the tune of helping the 2012 team win 71 games rather than 69, had he performed then like he did in 2013.

Pedroia bombarded Farrell daily with texts, emails and phone calls. He made suggestions on everything from personnel to locker placements.

The personnel suggestions, cool, that's what a team leader should do.  He shouldn't be overruling the manager or anything, but I can see the value in him making pinch hitting suggestions and the like.  Locker placements?  This is more worthless bullshit that only idiot readers will latch onto.  IT WAS THE LOCKAHS!  THAT WAS THE PROBLEM IN 2012!  GOOD THING PEDEY FIXED THAT!

Look, you get the gist of this, and it's not like it's going in a different direction before it wraps up.  I'm not going to write about the rest of it, but here's some of the non-analysis, idiot fan catnip, and narrative-based bullshit that I skipped over:

"All I know,'' said Pedroia shortly after his new manager was hired, "is when John Farrell walks into our clubhouse, everyone listens.''

This means literally nothing.

Gomes is a huge Farrell backer but concedes, "John is a great guy, but I don't want to talk about pitching all day. He does.''

Idiot fan catnip.  What fan wants to read that their team's coach/manager likes relaxing and spending time with his family, even if that's true for most of coaches/managers?

"When I'm talking to my manager, I feel like I am talking to my brother,'' Ortiz said.  "I don't want to talk about last year. That is in the past. I want to talk about here -- now.

Big Papi with an all time classic worthless cliche.

The "Farrell Factor,'' as Larry Lucchino coined it, has positioned the Red Sox as one of the favorites to win the World Series. 

Managers don't do that much.

When the Red Sox dealt malcontents Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett last summer,

I included this just because it's an unnecessary pot shot on Gonzalez and Crawford.  I don't think anyone has ever called either of them a malcontent.  I know some fans in New England have called Crawford other words that are not nice to call someone, but I really think it's irresponsible to lump those two guys in with known asshole Beckett.

"Think about Toronto this year. Everyone was wrong. You truly can't predict results solely on talent -- not in this game.

That's Jonny Gomes again, letting you know that THE GAMES ARE PLAYED ON THE FIELD, NOT IN THE PRESS ROOM WHERE BIG FREE AGENT SIGNINGS ARE ANNOUNCED.

"But there's something to be said for 25 guys with one goal -- that's winning. 

Gomes with another great cliche combined with some worthless non-analysis.

They have survived the loss of not one, not two, but three relievers. 

Oh dear me!  However did they endure a whole season with THREE injuries to the most easily replaced of players?  I'm surprised they even played all 162 games, let alone won the division.  They should get a parade no matter what happens in the postseason.

They have forged on even though their sellout streak came to a halt and paying customers still aren't quite "all-in." 

Well duh they're not all in, it's been 6 years since the Red Sox won a World Series.  What, you want them to be passionate about a team of LOOZAHS?

They grow beards and wear matching stars-and-stripes boxers and enjoy baseball so much, they've been compared to the 2004 "Idiots" of World Series fame, which is the ultimate Boston compliment.

I hope no Boston team ever wins another game, ever again, ever.

Knowing me I won't post again until Sunday, so here are three posts in one, I hope all eight of you out there are happy

First of all: thanks, Chris Berman (and pretty much every other NFL announcer this weekend), but I truly could not give any less of a hairy, sputtering shit what these replacement refs do for a living when they're not refereeing.  I don't care if any of them are teachers, I don't care if any of them are in sales, I don't care if any of them are cocksucking nuclear physicists.  I flat out don't, and I think I'm probably in the majority.  1) Like I already said, NO ONE GIVES A SHIT, IT'S JUST NOT INTERESTING OR RELEVANT IN THE LEAST.  2) The regular unionized refs have other full time jobs, too, and there's a good reason we don't have to hear about those jobs twenty times a game (see #1).

Second of all: there are Bill Simmons fans out there.  Tens of thousands of them.  If you know one, link them to this (they'll already have read it, and possibly already linked YOU to it, but I'm presenting a "just in case" scenario).  Once you know they've read it, as calmly as you can (suggestion: assuming you do the asking via GChat or email, don't use all caps), ask them how they sleep at night.  That article is supposed to be about last Wednesday's Giants/Cowboys season opener.  It is 1261 words long.  The first 647 are a story about his dog.  There is no sports context, not even a hint of one.  Just a drawn out, snooze-inducing story about his dog pooping in his house that can be best summarized as GUH HURRR DOGS ARE A REAL HANDFUL DERP DERP DERP.  So that's just over 50% of the article, toast.  Then we get the following:

What does this have to do with tonight's Giants-Cowboys game? 

GODDAMN NOTHING. You just wanted to tell a story about your dog because you're a navel-gazing self-obsessed cuntswabber.

There's an exceedingly good chance that Jerry Jones, as an NFL owner, has turned into a post-ribs Rufus. Year after year, he ruins at least one rug as Cowboys fans shrug their shoulders and say the football equivalent of things like, "Well, we're stuck with him, it's not like we can just drop him off at the pound and start over, right?"

Your dog pooped on a rug.  Jerry Jones, like every owner in the history of modern professional sports, occasionally makes a dumb move.  I get that Jones is more hands on that pretty much any other owner, so it's easier to pin the Cowboys' failures on him than it is to blame the failures of the average team on that team's owner, but this is still incredibly pathetic.

The Cowboys do everything in the flashiest way possible, obscuring their staggering lack of success in recent years. 

Their lack of recent success is not obscured in any way.  EVERYONE knows they've only won one playoff game since their last Super Bowl victory and have had some very shitty seasons.  Everyone.  Only someone completely out of touch with the NFL would think the "the Cowboys actually haven't been that good for the last 15 years!" is some kind of insightful angle.

When a franchise worries about the perception of what it's doing instead of what it's actually doing, trouble usually ensues. We just watched this happen to the Red Sox. 

Oh good, finally, some Red Sox analysis!  That's what the readers came for!

When a franchise underestimates its fans and assumes they're not smart enough to value things like patience and planning, and that it needs to keep them interested with splashy moves the same way a parent would hand a screaming kid an ice cream cone, trouble usually ensues. Again, we just watched this happen to the Red Sox. 

/wanking motion

Which makes me think the Cowboys will be our next big-market flame-out. 

They already have flamed out, dumbass.  They're one of the biggest failures in the league since 1996 if you measure dollars per win or dollars per postseason win.  You pointed it out yourself like 150 words ago.  

Just ask Knicks fans and Redskins fans. When your fans fully expect you to crap on the carpet before it even happens, that's officially the point of no return. 

That sentence is meaningless.  It carries no meaning, it adds nothing to anything.  It is a waste of time, pixels, bandwidth, and anything else of which it could possibly be a waste.

Anyway, I'm laying 3.5 points with the Giants over Dallas tonight. 

Of course the Cowboys handled the Giants and cruised to victory.

Finally of all: managers don't do that much.  They just don't.  But some of them are media darlings, and that means that when those managers' teams succeed, the media is going to trip all over itself to find a way to give those managers as much credit as possible for success that is 95% due to the actions of players.  Here, some doofus gives Buck Showalter big time props for doing stuff that holy sweet Jesus, I certainly hope every single manager in the league does.  (This article contains another article.  Stay with me now, don't get confused.  INCEPTION.)  

What's his secret? As with any manager, it's putting his players in position to succeed. That can take the form of sniffing out the platoon advantage, keeping peace in the clubhouse, having a deft touch with the bullpen, balancing hunches with data-driven decisions, and so on. 

Like you just said, "as with any manager."

One of the ways managers can distinguish themselves is by juggling lineups and rotations based on non-traditional "platoon points" -- e.g., ground ball-fly ball tendencies, park effects, and strengths/weaknesses of the opposing defense.

They can only distinguish themselves by paying attention to these things if other managers around the league don't pay attention to them, and the odds of that being the case are like nothing percent.

Additionally, as Jonathan Pitts of the Baltimore Sun explains in an outstanding piece on the peculiar phenomenon of the strike zone, Showalter also lets the umpiring drive his tactical decisions. Pitts writes:

The skipper, now in his 14th big league season, points to a spreadsheet on a wall in his office. It ranks all big league umpires by how greatly they favor pitchers or hitters.

The top name on the list is Brian Runge, an ump known for calling a big zone; lower down is veteran Joe West, whose zone is seen as smaller, his ball-strike distribution more even.

When Runge's behind the plate, Showalter says, he might tell hitters to "go up there swinging." When West is back there, "we know we'll have to throw the ball over the plate."

Holy.  Shit.  It's like he's Rain Man or something.  What a savant.

Showalter is known to tweak his pitching rotation when he sees the umpiring schedule for the week.

I live within the TV broadcasting area of the Orioles and watch a couple games a week.  I have not once heard my main man Gary Thorne or any of his revolving cast of color commentators mention that a starter was moved up or back a day to correspond to the umpiring schedule.  If it's true, that's actually a somewhat unorthodox thing for a manager to do, but I kind of doubt it's true.  Now back to the original CBSSports article.

It stands to reason, right? 

Wrong?  Teams are definitely not going to go out of their way to start pitchers on three days' rest because they might get some kind of nebulous benefit from the plate umpire that night.  I just looked through the game logs of all eight Orioles pitchers who have started at least ten games this season.  Not one of them has made a start on three days's rest, something they'd pretty much have to do by definition if Buck was fucking around with the rotation to get favorable umpire matchups.  Granted, because they've started so many different guys, it's possible that Buck has moved some of them in and out of the rotation at times advantageous to those matchups.  But it's certainly not a primary strategy of his; the most I'll allows is the possibility that at times he's had to say "Shit, Arrieta can't fucking get anyone out anymore.  I guess we'll bring up Tillman to take his spot in the rotation next Thursday, and hey, whaddaya know, that's also an umpire whose tendencies will help Tillman!"  Again, I sincerely doubt that even this much has happened, but I'll grant that it's possible.

After all, the discrepancies among umpires have a bearing on the game itself, so it only follows that those discrepancies also have a bearing on how managers approach the game. 

If you're desperately trying to give Showalter the credit that should go to Baltimore's bullpen and timely hitting, then yeah, you might make that argument.

Maybe Showalter's ahead of the curve in this approach, 

If by "this approach" you mean telling hitters to swing more often when an ump with a big zone is calling the game, there's not a fucking chance.  If by "this approach" you mean juggling your rotation to somehow generate umpire/SP matchups favorable to your team, there's almost no fucking chance he's actually doing this.

or maybe he's the only one talking about it. In either case, it's interesting to know he's thinking about the umpires as he fills out his lineup card.

Buck Showalter is an MLB manager.  There are 29 other guys who have more or less his exact same skillset out there.  His has a career managing record that is mildly successful at best.  He's not made out of magic and candy and lollipops.  Can the baseball media please just get the fuck over the guy?  That's rhetorical, I know the answer is no.  I'm hoping the O's make the playoffs because their fans deserve it. But if and when they do, holy fried shitballs, it's going to be an insufferable week of hearing about how Buck himself made 50 starts on the mound and hit cleanup and 7th every day to propel them there.  

Buck Showalter is made of magic and knows how to create ponies out of thin air

Either that, or he's just another MLB manager who might be able to affect his team's record by a win or two over the course of a season. He's got a career "winning" percentage (quotation marks used because managers almost never win or lose anything) that's above .500 mostly because of a single awesome season with the Diamondbacks in 1999. He's had some ups, some downs, and mostly just talked a lot more than he should. But don't tell any of that to mlb.com's Hal Bodley, who has written a opus to managerial skill that's pretty sad.

Buck Showalter has the Orioles playing better than they have in eons, which reminds me of a conversation I had with George Steinbrenner years ago, discussing the talents of the manager.

Ah, George Steinbrenner, foremost authority on managers and how to handle them.

"I've never seen anybody more prepared, more detailed," Steinbrenner said. "He might be a little intense, but he never leaves anything to chance. He always has a plan and despises mistakes."

"Which is why I ran his ass out of town after four seasons."

Showalter grew up in the Yankees organization, where he spent 19 years. He managed them from 1992 until he resigned in '95,

Yielding the reins to Joe Torre and then seeing the Yankees win 4 of the next 5 World Serieseseses. I don't want to contradict my point by saying that Torre was the reason for all that postseason success, I just wanted to point out the double-wrongness of this article. Not only do managers not do much, but by all appearances Showalter isn't even a very good one.

After that, Showalter had managerial stops with the D-backs

Who won the World Series the year after he left town. Same point.

and Rangers,

Where he did exactly nothing in four years except piss off Ozzie Guillen.

but this assignment with Baltimore could be the most important of his career.

The two game difference he might be worth if he's an awesome manager will mean the most in taking Balitmore from 71 to 73 wins this year!

The numbers have been repeated many times, but after Showalter took over as manager on Aug. 3, he guided the Orioles to a 34-23 record, behind only the Twins and Phillies for the best record in the Majors during that period.

Which is relevant because those three teams went on to face each other in a three-way World Series showdown, the first of its kind. Who won? You guessed it: the Yankees.

The 34 wins in 57 games were more than previous 2010 managers Dave Trembley and Juan Samuel compiled in 105 games.

I'll admit that a midseason switch gives a little insight into managerial skill since most of the players are the same throughout the course of the year. On the other hand 1) the Orioles weren't going to play .300 ball all season, that's almost impossible for any MLB team to do 2) just because they got better under Showalter doesn't mean they wouldn't have gotten better under ANY new manager 3) managers don't do that much 4) Showalter is a loudmouthed idiot.

Showalter has a special managerial magic that has been contagious in the Orioles' clubhouse.

Barf.

Throughout Spring Training, he kept preaching that it was important to build on the success of the last weeks of 2010 -- continue the momentum, so to speak.

TRY TO KEEP WINNING? THIS GUY IS OFF HIS ROCKER! Double barf.

The thing about the Orioles this spring is that all facets of the game have improved. Hitters are driving in runners more frequently with two outs,

That's all Buck right there.

the young pitchers are showing more poise,

Or they're pitching better, which is certainly 100% Buck.

the defense is better

Because of Buck.

and the team is playing with much more confidence.

Non-sarcastically, that might be 20% attributable to Buck.

Showalter should take much of the credit.

Triple barf.

I've Got a Bone to Pick with MSNBC's HR Department.....

Celizic wrote again. I continue to wonder what anyone ever saw in this guy.

Time for Manny, Torre to earn their keep
As the Dodgers struggle, focus should be on star, manager

You could focus on how Raffy Furcal shit the bed this year, or how someone sapped Russell Martin's power. You could focus on the fact that the first baseman can't slug his way out of a paper bag, or the fact that injuries have dilapidated the rotation to the point where knucklejunkit Chuck Haeger made a start (and will make another today) for arguably the best team in baseball. You could look at a little bad luck, or the fact that their "decline" is more rooted in how hot the Colorado Rockies are than how less-than-good the Dodgers are playing.

But you can ABSOLUTELY NOT focus on a guy who doesn't play for the team, or THE FUCKING STAR LEFT FIELDER HITTING .306/.424/.536. Remember these slash stats. You will be seeing them many times in this post.

When the Dodgers opened the vault to hire Joe Torre, it was because of his ability to manage teams under playoff stress. And when they dug deep to sign Manny Ramirez, it was because of his ability to drag a team into the playoffs by his dreadlocks.

Which he is failing miserably at to the tune of .306/.424/.536.

This would be a good time for both to live up to their reputation: Torre as the unflappable leader whose teams never panic, even when they can’t buy a win; Manny as one of baseball’s most reliable RBI machines.

The Dodgers are 6-4 in their last 10....they can't BUY a win.

And Manny sucks too. .306/.424/.536.

Nobody’s blaming Torre for what could be a memorable collapse should the Rockies continue their torrid pace and the Dodgers fail to remember how to win. At least not in Los Angeles, they aren’t.

The Dodgers are 12-14 this month. Vulnerable, but saying that they "forgot how to win", is insane. Most very good teams have at least one month like this.

And so the blame for the Dodger doldrums is falling squarely on the shoulders of Manny.

Ex....cuse me? You're pointing the finger at the best offensive player on the team, (who, might I add, is hitting .306/.424/.536)?

Normally, calling one player on the carpet for a team’s problems is too simplistic. But in this case, it’s not.

Mike Celizic has thoroughly analyzed the performances of everyone on the roster and has come to the conclusion that Manny Ramirez is the problem. He tried several different methods, and all of them output that Manny is the problem. I'm serious.

...

...

Naw, I'm kidding. He just figured out his batting average since the All-Star break and cited some freakish RBI stats.

If Manny were even half the player he was last year, the Dodgers would be comfortably in first place

1) The Dodgers are (sort of) comfortably in first place.
2) You're blaming Manny for not repeating one of the best two-month performances of all-time.
3) .306/.424/.536

and I’d probably be writing yet another column about the — groan! — AL East.

At least you recognize what a fuckstick you are about your writing topics.

At this time last year, Manny was as awesome a force as you’ll see. After arriving from Boston, he averaged an RBI a game and dragged L.A. into the playoffs.

Yes. This, Mike Celizic, is not what we in the baseball world called "normal". We call this superhumanly clutch, or fluketasticly spectacular. No one in the world can do that on a monthly basis.

He signed a short but sweet contract in the spring, took nearly two months off early in the season to serve a suspension for violating the league’s drug policy, came back with his signature dreads longer than ever, and then disappeared.

It's true. Ask opposing pitchers whether they noticed the guy hitting .306/.424/.536. Nowhere to be seen.

Brett Favre was better down the stretch for the Jets last year than Manny has been in August for L.A. John Smoltz wasn’t as bad for the Red Sox this year than Manny has been for the Dodgers.

First of all, who the hell is "Brett Favre"?

Second.....

A guy who had averaged a 55.4 passer rating and a 2/9 TD/INT over the last 5 games of the regular season, and a guy with an 8.32 ERA weren't as bad for their respective teams than the supreme junkiest player in sports, who has been hitting .306/.424./.536.

Huh.

I give up. If he doesn't get fired for writing that, I don't think he ever will.

He’s been so bad he got booed in Dodgers Stadium the other day when he misplayed a ball into a triple and put another 0-for-4 in the box score in another loss.

Asshole. WE DON'T CARE WHAT YOU DID IN JUNE, MANNY!

Dodgers fans aren’t given to booing — it takes too much energy and demands that the spectators actually pay attention to the game.

Mike Celizic isn't given to facts - they take too much research and demand that the writer actually follow the sport in question.

But even Dodgers fans have their limits, and Manny has found them with one of the worst months he’s probably ever had in his career.

Manny Ramirez, August: .306/.424/.536.

Naw, just kidding. It's .287/.391/.415. Quit dragging down the universe, Manny.

Through Sunday’s games, Manny had played 22 games in August. In two of those games, he performed like Manny, getting a home run and three RBIs in each of them. In the other 20 games, he has zero home runs and a grand total of six RBIs, a hitting pace that a lot of pitchers have little trouble keeping up with. He’s driven in just one run in his last dozen games.

Congratulations. You've found the worst possible way to evaluate a person's month-long performance in history.

He’s hitting .303 on the season, but only .254 since the All-Star break.

I told you there would be some dumb batting average-related thing in here.

The Dodgers are not a bad hitting team.

Uh huh.....

They lead the National League in team batting average and on-base percentage.

Which is "not bad", as you said.

Normally, that’s a sure formula for winning baseball. And when Manny’s driving in runs, it is.

Manny Ramirez is the only player on the Los Angeles Dodgers responsible for driving in runs. It's actually impossible for James Loney and Andre Ethier to do it.

The Dodgers are third in the NL in scoring, with 603 runs. But they’re 10th in slugging percentage

Clearly the fault of that .536-slugging Manny. By the way, Manny's complete line for the season? .306/.424/.536

All other things being equal, when Manny is hitting, they win. When he’s not hitting, they have problems.

When you set all other factors equal in two scenarios, the performance of the one variable factor will pretty much determine the difference in outcome of the two scenarios.

And that's totally how it's worked with the Dodgers this year.

So far, there’s no sign that Torre has done anything to light a fire under Manny.

No need to strike a match to ignite a fully spreading-and-dangerous wildfire.

Right now, nobody’s blaming Torre for that. But if things continue to go badly in Colorado and if that once huge lead continues to erode like a sand castle in a hurricane, somebody’s going to bring it up.

And if they don’t, they should.

Three-oh-six, four-twenty-four, five-thirty-six.

John Kruk's Tiny Brain Tries to Analyze Baseball

I try to avoid writing posts about my favorite teams. I really do. Even my favorite sports blog, the dick joke-tacular Kissing Suzy Kolber, suffers from occasional unfunniness as its writers spend too much time on lame jokes and irrelevant news stories about their favorite teams (OMG apparently the Redskins are going to sign a new long snapper!). But sometimes a dick-for-brains fatso like John Kruk takes a horrifically analyzed shot at the squad you live and die for. And that's when you're allowed to break your own rules.

So I'm sitting there in my mom's basement last night, watching Lord of the Rings, eating Funyuns, and playing Stratego against my stuffed animals like usual, when I realize that Baseball Tonight is on. The Rockies have just finished off an 11-1 drubbing of the Angels. Since there were only a handful of games because it was a Monday, and because the Rox have now won 17 out of 18, I realize that there's actually a good chance they're going to get some airtime! It only happens about once a month (usually in the context of "How can the Cubs/Dodgers/Mets/Phillies lose to a team like the Rockies? Impossible") so if you're a Rockies fan you don't want to miss it. As soon as I flip the channel to ESPN, I see a screen displaying the following graphic:

Dexter Fowler 77
Chris Iannetta 233
Troy Tulowitzki 345

And who is talking about this mysterious set of numbers but everyone's favorite unitesticle, Mr. Kruk. I quickly realize the numbers indicate each Rockie's career games played. What's John's angle? Unfortunately I don't have the exact quotes, but what follows are reasonably accurate representations of what he had to say.

I mean, as you get going deep into the season, you don't know how these guys are going to play. They're inexperienced. These guys just aren't known quantities.

It quickly becomes apparent that Krukie's mission for this segment is to tell the nice people at home why the Rockies suck and have absolutely no chance at getting to the playoffs this year. Now, here's the thing. Any analyst can hold that opinion if they want to and it won't bother me. Go right ahead. I'm not some kind of zealot, sitting here saying "If you don't think the Rockies are going to win the World Series then you can just shut the fuck up right now." It's not like that, I promise.

But if you're going to say that they're not a playoff contender, try to pick a reason for doing so that makes some vague semblance of sense. Seriously. Go way, way, way out on a limb and find something better than this. The back of their rotation is shaky. Their pen is leaning on castoffs from other teams like Joel Peralta and Josh Fogg. Even with Brad Hawpe's monster season, they're not getting much offensive production from their outfield. Fine! Great! Go ahead and say those things. But this? So Fowler is young and inexperienced, true. I'll give you that. He may crumble down the stretch. But Iannetta and Tulowitzki are in their fourth fucking years in the bigs. They've both missed time due to injury, which is why their games played totals are relatively low, but it's not like they're a couple of unseasoned 21 year olds who were in AA last year. THEY WENT TO THE FUCKING WORLD SERIES TWO YEARS AGO. They're not experienced enough for you, Kruk? Go fuck yourself with a fucking soup ladle. Asshole. Oh, and here's another great point from Sir Tubsalot:

They won't be able to win the wild card because they have too many teams to pass in the standings.

Here's your current NL wild card standings, which John apparently hasn't checked since Memorial Day. Two teams, leading them by a half game, with only three months left in the season? No way can they climb that mountain!

His latest entry in the "Baseball Tonight Clubhouse" print article series is dedicated to finding other nonsensical reasons as to why the Rockies are doomed. I can only imagine how long it would take him to type all this up. He must have dictated it to an ESPN intern, and then eaten said intern.

I've been in the middle of a couple of firings, and it always seems as if you play better immediately after. When you're a player and your manager gets fired, most players feel responsible. I've been a part of a couple of similar situations,

Wait, have you ever been in that situation before? You only said so twice in the last three sentences. He then goes on to say that their recent hot streak is attributable to the firing of Clint Hurdle and the arrival of new manager Jim Tracy, and that the bump they're experiencing as a result of a change in leadership won't last. That's all well and good, but let me just apply a classic FireJay label to this post: managers don't do that much. This is (almost) the exact same team of 25 players Hurdle was managing. Clearly they have a lot of talent, having beaten up on legitimate teams like the Cardinals, Brewers, and Rays during this stretch. The fact that Hurdle wasn't getting much mileage out of them and Tracy is doesn't mean they're only playing better because of Tracy. It's obviously a number of things, Tracy's arrival being one of them. A manager can't make a team that started the year 20-32 go on a 17-1 streak. He can help, but the players have to play the games. And it's pretty obvious at this point that the Rockies have a collection of players who are at the very least capable of winning the wild card.

Colorado's run is just that, a run. In my mind, this team is not a threat to win the wild card. Even though the Mets and Phillies have played terribly lately, the wild card is still going to come out of the NL East.

There you have it, folks. Why can't the Rockies do it? Because the WC is going to come out of the NL East, that's why. Duhhhhh. No analysis. No explanation. John Kruk is a fucking simpleton among simpletons. And again, if you want to say Colorado won't win the WC, that's fine. But to say they're not even "a threat?" With the second best run differential in the NL (trailing only the Dodgers, thus obviously ahead of the Mets and Phillies), they're not even a threat? What are you, fucking nuts? Why won't Florida repeat as NCAA football champions this year? Because Alabama is going to win it all. How's that for an airtight explanation?

Both teams are almost unwatchable at the moment, but I'm still certain the Phillies will win the division and the Mets will take the wild card. [no further explanation given; end of article; beginning of John's nightly run to 7-11 for as many hot dogs as they happen to have on the rollers when he gets there]

Possible reasons Kruk feels this way:
1) He played most of his career with the Phillies, so he'll naturally favor any playoff scenario which ensures they'll get in
2) He's felt this way since the beginning of the season (and felt that the Rockies were no good), and simply refuses to change his opinion out of stubbornness. Of course, as we learned from the Cleveland "2009 AL Central Champs in Waiting" Indians, early season groupthink can be a dangerous thing
3) Standard east coast bias- Kruk (and the other the media members with whom he associates) can name more players on the Phillies and Mets than on the Rockies, and they play in cities with which he is very familiar while the Rockies play in one of those flyover states, so there's no way the Rockies can contend
4) He genuinely believes that because Chris Iannetta and Troy Tulowitzki have only played about 250 and 350 MLB games respectively (and because they trail two teams by a half game each in the current wild card standings, surely an insurmountable lead) Colorado will not make the playoffs. Nevermind the fact that the Mets are depending heavily on Daniel Murphy and Fernando Martinez, who have combined for fewer than 150 career games played. The Phillies, to John's credit, are indeed a team chock full of seasoned veterans. Their rotation is a complete and total fucking joke, but hey, at least they don't have any inexperienced players

It doesn't really matter which answer is correct. All I know is this: John Kruk is a card carrying horse's ass. There isn't a lobotomy complete enough to save ESPN viewers from his retardery. The next time I have reason to believe the Rockies will be on Baseball Tonight (which might be some time after the All Star break, assuming they don't lose any games between now and then) I'm not going to bother watching.

Before I go, here's some bonus moron-speak from Baseball Tonight's Chris Singleton about the Rockies:

I think they're making their run too early.

Yeah, you know, he's got a point. Wins are worth double in September as compared to June. The Rockies would be much better holding back, staying a good 5 or 6 games out of the WC, and then hoping they can put together another 11 game winning streak during the last two weeks of the season. It's not a fucking bike race, Singleton. You don't choose when to make your fucking push. If you win your first 100 games and lose your last 62, you'll make the playoffs. If you lose your first 62 and win your last 100, you'll make the playoffs. Good thing you share a set with John Kruk- otherwise I would have wasted a lot more of the time spent on this post ripping you apart as opposed to him.

I never thought I'd say this, but relative to some of his coworkers, that Steve Phillips is kind of an OK dude.

Again? Really?

I thought I'd seen the last of this crap when Mariotti left. But I forgot one important thing: Rick Sutcliffe still exists.

When you look back at the Cubs the year before Lou Piniella took over as manager, they lost 96 games.

That's true. The team had a .319 OBP. Juan Pierre logged 699 at-bats. .245/.271/.339 Ronny Cedeno had five hundred thirty-four. Derrek Lee, the best player on the team, was hurt a lot and only batted 175 times. 80 starts were made by a pitcher with an ERA 5.32 or higher. They were very, very bad.

Two years ago, Piniella's first year, I was in uniform with the Cubs during spring training. We had a four-run lead in a spring training game and a lot of the guys that were on the field weren't going to be part of the team by April, but most of the team was still there sitting on the bench. Next thing you know, we started kicking it around out there and we'd given up the lead. I'd never been in the dugout for one of Piniella's eruptions, but he got up and started going up and down the line saying, "That's those Cubbies that lost 96 games! Now it's all coming out. Now, I can see what they were talking about. Boys you can't win baseball games like this. You've got to pay attention! Is anybody paying attention?" In other words, he went off.

That's how you turn around a baseball team, all you managing hopeful! Make crazy gestures with your hands! Ask if people are paying attention a lot!

Even the coaches came up to me afterward and said "Now you know, man. That's Lou."

How inspiringly irrelevant.

But Piniella was making the point that if they were going to keep playing like that, they were going to have him all over them every day.

While he certainly knows how to motivate, it's Piniella's ability to evaluate that's helped this team evolve from 66-96 to where they are today.

The additions of Alfonso Soriano, Ted Lilly, Jim Edmonds, Reed Johnson, Kosuke Fukudome, Geovany Soto, Rich Harden, and ::gasp:: Jason Marquis had nothing to do with it, I'm sure.

This is the first time since 1908 that the Cubs have gone to the postseason in back-to-back seasons. If you had to just pick one person responsible for the transformation, it would have to be

Derrek Lee being healthy? Soto breaking out? Ryan Dempster putting together a stellar season out of nowhere? Carlos Marmol emerging as a force in the bullpen?

Piniella.

BAAAAAAHHHHHHNNNNTTTTT. WRONG!

A couple of years ago, Piniella noticed Ryan Theriot starting to press a couple of weeks into spring training. Piniella took him aside and told him to relax, that he was coming to Chicago with him. When everyone was focusing on Theriot's limitations, saying he had a weak arm and no power, Piniella looked right at me and said that he knew Theriot was the kind of guy he could win with.

HAH! Those crazy suckers that thought Theriot had no power and no arm were.....exactly right.

Theriot is slugging .351. That's Scott Podsednik territory. He has a very good .375 OBP, and coming out of 2B or SS, he's fairly valuable. But given all that, his complete and total lack of power reduces him to being a league average hitter, even at that OBP clip. He's also not a good defensive shortstop by any means (which isn't really his fault, he should be playing second base on any team with a shortstop than can hit better than Ronny Cedeno). All of this makes him one of the 15 or so most overrated players in baseball.

And if you look at Theriot, he's won championships in college at LSU and in the minor leagues.

This is not a big deal at all.

He reminds me a lot of Craig Counsell or David Eckstein.

Ya don't fucking say, shithead.

When you see a big inning from the Cubs these days, he always seems to be right in the middle of it.

Gotta love this statement. You can't disprove it! And I guarantee you it holds absolutely no water.

Piniella also recognized the problems with the starting rotation he inherited with Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. He knew something had to be done. They parted ways with Prior, but he saw something that told him that Wood could be the closer. It was his idea to put Ryan Dempster back in the rotation and move Wood to the bullpen, knowing Wood's arm couldn't hold up to the innings needed out of a starter. Piniella figured if he was only going to be able to throw two innings effectively, why not make it the last two.

That move was pretty smart, but it completely takes whatever say Jim Hendry had out of the equation, and also negates the fact that Ryan Dempster has pitched better this season than ever in his entire career. Piniella does deserve some credit for making the move, but you're fucking acting like Piniella is pitching for Dempster or something.

Piniella would be quick to tell you that the players deserve the credit.

Because he likes saying accurate things.

But the one thing a good manager does is put the players in a position to succeed. Take a look at center field, for instance. Back in May, Piniella saw that they had only five home runs from left-handed hitters. He said they couldn't win like that. That's when he decided to give Jim Edmonds a try.

WOAH WOAH WOAH. Stop right there. You're acting like Piniella had this nobody named "Jim Edmonds" just rotting away in triple-A or at the end of the bench and was like, "you know, nothing else is working, let's run this kid out there and see what he's made of!" Jim Edmonds was signed by Jim Hendry. Does Jim Hendry get any credit for any of this? Any at all?

Now, if you look at their production out of center field since the All-Star break, it's completely changed, and they're doing it with two guys that had been released in Edmonds and Reed Johnson.

Reed Johnson was also snatched up by Jim Hendry, not manufactured in Lou Piniella's "Players-I-Need-O-Matic Machine" (TM).

He's not throwing Johnson out there every day, especially against the tough right-handers. That's where Edmonds comes in. Likewise, Edmonds doesn't have to face the best lefties. They are put in a spot where they can succeed.

Woah...careful everyone. Sutcliffe just stumbled upon the idea of a "platoon". It's a very vague concept and entirely new to managing. Very few managers can pull off this hyper-creative and complicated tactic.

As great a job as Joe Torre is doing with those characters in Los Angeles, Piniella is my National League Manager of the Year.

This is so ridiculous. Not so much the Manager of the Year part, but how can you be completely and totally ignorant to how much better the intrinsic quality of the players on the Cubs has become over the past two years? Do you know what a difference a healthy Derrek Lee makes? How about having one of the best catchers in baseball just break out before your eyes? Is that Piniella? What did Lou Piniella have to do with snagging Rich Ha-(Hold on a second, "Home Improvement" just ended, and it has been replaced on the television by "George Lopez." This needs to stop before I can finish that word)-rden? Don't get me wrong, the man has pushed a good amount of the right buttons in his time on the North side, but there are umpteen more important reasons to why the Cubs are good. You, Rick Sutcliffe, are the quintessential example of why ex-players should not be given writing jobs simply because you used to play baseball.

Hey, Joe Torre: Get Out There and Hit Five Home Runs While Throwing a Shutout or You're Fired

Seriously, people. I don't know how many different ways I can say it: Managers. Don't. Do. That. Much. They just don't. It's completely unquantifiable, of course, but if I had to guess I would say that the difference between having a good manager and a bad manager might be worth (at most) 2 or 3 games in the standings over the course of a 162 game season. So that said, here's a list of reasons the Dodgers are (allegedly) underachieving at 49-52 as of this morning:

-Injuries
-Injuries
-Joe Torre giving too much playing time to Juan Pierre*
-Injuries
-Joe Torre giving too much playing time to Andruw Jones*
-Injuries
-Jeff Kent in rapid decline
-Injuries
-They actually weren't that great to begin with, maybe an 86ish win team at most

(Note: * means this is almost definitely a result of pressure from ownership)

Does that seem fair? It should. When Brad Penny and Rafael Furcal are both hurt or ineffective for more than half a season, an 86ish win team will turn into a 80ish win team. The anchor effect of giving significant ABs to Jones and Pierre (thanks, Frank McCourt) can drop you down around 76ish wins. But don't tell any of that to FoxSports.com's Ian O'Connor. He'll have none of it. According to him and his smarmy mugshot, the NL West is Joe Torre's division to lose.

The State Farm ad, a cute one, leads you to believe Joe Torre has officially retired in his job as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He drinks wheat grass between innings, writes screenplays between pitching changes, and spends off days riding his surfboard from one welcoming wave to the next.

Extra BP? A few more pregame hours in the video room surveying a wayward pitcher's arm slot?

Who needs any of that when you're living a life of green fields, blue skies, and late-arriving crowds, and when you're working a comfortable 3,000 miles away from the angry House of Steinbrenner?

I'm pretty sure that commercial presented a fictional portrayal of what Torre's life is like. I'm pretty sure Ian knows that as well, but has cleverly used it as his intro to this piece in order to make undiscerning readers think that Joe Torre is a lazy bum who is singularly responsible for the Dodgers' struggles.

One hundred games into his fifth big-league term, Torre has settled into the Dodger way like an old man settles into his favorite spot on a park bench.

OK, and that's an even more direct accusation aimed at inducing the same conclusion. Read the following example of this "laziness" O'Connor sees, and ask yourself this question: what the fuck does it have to do with how hard Torre may or may not be working?

He says he is happy the stories about his baseball team are confined to the sports page. Whenever the cartoon character known as Alex Rodriguez is linked to the blonde of the month, Torre gets to be a disengaged observer rather than the interrogated boss charged to clean his third baseman's mess.

Being happy that one's workplace is relatively free of distractions- a surefire sign of malaise.

Only this portrait of Joe Cool, cruising on Sunset Boulevard, ignores one undeniable truth: Torre needs to win his division this year,

Because surely this portrait (which is entirely manufactured by O'Connor, of course) is one of a loser. Someone who couldn't care less about how many games his team wins. A man who may or may not even be aware that baseball is a sport in which one team wins and another loses! I mean, if you're a MLB manager and not constantly acting like Lou Pinella with ants in his pants, you might as well not show up, right?

if only because there isn't a single valid reason he shouldn't.

Least clever analysis, ever. I hate smug writing like this. Sheesh. Gag me with a racquetball. Not only are there dozens of reasons why the Dodgers (notice I didn't say Torre himself) shouldn't win the NL West this season, there are dozens more why the Diamondbacks or Rockies should.

Sure, the Dodgers have had a ton of injuries, closing in on 600 man games' worth. But Torre's been around the sport long enough to understand two things about injuries:

1.) Everybody's got 'em.

2.) Nobody wants to hear about 'em.

That's fine. No one likes bitching. At the same time, to pretend that the losses of Furcal and Penny haven't been debilitating, and to further imply that Torre himself needs to somehow compensate for those losses, is fucking ludicrous.

The Dodgers should take the National League West, wretched as it is, and Torre will have some explaining to do if they don't.

So will owner Frank McCourt and GM Ned Colletti. In fact, my quick calculations show that each of these men will have approximately 1 gazillion times more explaining to do than Torre himself.

Start with the reason he was hired on the rebound after his bitter divorce from the Yanks.

He came in to repair a fractured clubhouse. That's a laudable goal, but not necessarily one which guarantees on the field success if completed.

Grady Little wasn't just an 82-80 manager last year; he was an 82-80 manager done in by the clubhouse division between players old and young, and by the sudden availability of Torre, a candidate who'd won four World Series titles and earned a dozen consecutive trips to the postseason before the Steinbrenners and team president Randy Levine ran him out with an offer designed to be refused.

More periods. Less commas. (I could probably stand to follow that rule myself from time to time, but I'm not a contributor for FoxSports.com.)

It was unbecoming of Torre to negotiate with the Dodgers while Little still held the job, but hey, that's how big-boy business is done. Frank McCourt, Dodgers owner, had every right to want someone who could do better than 82-80. His common sense told him that someone was Joe Torre.

If his commons sense says that any manager could have won the Dodgers more than 85 games last year, it is almost definitely wrong. I don't care what their record was on August 1st, or whatever- they got steamrolled at the end of the season in part because of scheduling (7 games down the stretch against the unstoppable Rockies), in part because of age, and in part because of bad luck. The clubhouse divisions might have played a part, or they might not have. But one rule remains constant: MANAGERS DON'T DO THAT MUCH.

As it turns out, 82-80 might just win this year's West. But even as the Dodgers swear their clubhouse has become a more harmonious place, Torre's still on track to finish south of .500.

You mean the Dodgers are still on track to finish south of .500.

Little was 56-44 at this point in '07. You don't need an advanced degree in math to know that a divided 56-44 team beats a united 49-51 team eight days a week.

Well, one is 7 games better than the other. But if they face off head-to-head for eight straight days, the odds are that they'll probably either split those games or someone will win five. Just saying.

"We're going to make everybody proud of the product we put on the field," Torre said on arrival in Los Angeles.

Well, what the fuck else was he going to say? "We'll try to go out and not embarrass ourselves too much?" This is becoming a theme in my posts. Writers picking on things high-level officials say during pre-scripted press conferences (like Jemele Hill ripping the NFL spokesperson for saying the league doesn't have a gang problem) is fucking lame.

His Dodgers haven't inspired much in the way of pride, at least not yet. Fans in the market looking for a team worthy of their time, attention and disposable income would have to turn to Mike Scioscia's Angels, the club that forever haunted Torre in the Bronx. The Angels are 12 games better than the Dodgers in a tougher division of a tougher league.

I'm sure the Dodgers are really hurting for fans.

Now turn to the page in your scorebook that covers team payrolls. At $118 million, the Dodgers are spending $52 million more on wages than the Diamondbacks, and $50 million more on wages than the Rockies. No, it isn't quite the absurd advantage over the competition that Torre enjoyed with the Yankees, who took a Bob Beamon leap over the $200 million barrier.

I know the Olympics are just around the corner, but let's take it easy with the Bob Beamon references, huh? He doesn't even have the record anymore.

But still, McCourt has laid out enough cash (not to mention the $13 million he paid Torre) to expect better than what his manager has delivered.

Apparently ownership dumping money into black holes of anti-production like Pierre and Jones means a team's manager has not done his job.

For the foreseeable future, Torre won't be fleeing the kind of lava that came pouring out of Mount Steinbrenner once the parades stopped and the procession of Division Series flameouts started. Ned Colletti, general manager, is the easiest of targets; he'll be gone long before anyone has a second thought about Torre.

About halfway through the article, Ian finally identifies someone who is actually worthy of blame.

McCourt is under fire for reportedly killing a deal for CC Sabathia that would've added $7.5 million to the payroll, a charge the owner denies. And when the owner and GM aren't absorbing major hits, Andruw Jones, who somehow managed to strike out five times in one game, rightfully assumes the role of helpless punching bag.

The hits keep on comin'. Let's see how it all gets tied back to that lazy, lackadaisical, no-good bum Joe Torre.

Torre is also protected by the disabled list and his players' fabulous talent for landing on it. Rafael Furcal, Brad Penny, Nomar Garciaparra, Takashi Saito, Juan Pierre, and on and on and on.

Try to leave Pierre off that list. Some injuries are addition by subtraction.

The pitching staff has covered for the human frailty, allowing the Dodgers to stay in the race.

If you can call this a race.

More smugness. Not surprising, of course, if you look at Ian's mugshot again.

The Dodgers are due to win it, long overdue in fact. They haven't won a playoff series, never mind a championship, since Kirk Gibson did his thing against Dennis Eckersley in 1988. They've played 13 postseason games since that magical run, and lost 12 of them.

Somehow, this is probably also Torre's fault.

Torre embraced this challenge after the Yankees all but told him they no longer required his services. On his return to New York, a road trip to Shea at the end of May, Torre confirmed that he'd had it with his hometown's intensity and pace.

"I'm glad my time has come and gone as far as the high-wire act all the time," he said. "New York is great for the good times and memorable for the bad times.

"I obviously have a lot of friends here and it was a special time for 12 years. But it was time to move on and I'm glad I made the decision, not for any other reason than I'm more comfortable where I am."

Comfortable? Torre shouldn't get too comfortable.

Again, apparently we're now equating being happy that your team isn't part of a fucking media circus with doing an inadequate job.

He's not a ceremonial Dodger in the Tommy Lasorda mold. Joe Torre is the active and accountable leader of a team that has no good reason to lose a division its manager was hired to win.

Hiring a manager to win a division in which you finished the preceding season 8 games out of first place is like hiring a hypnotherapist to fix your car.



PS- MANAGERS DON'T DO THAT MUCH