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.

Power Rankings are Whatever But....

Check this out:

Krukie gives the Power Rankings for the league, and shamelessly puts the Cleveland Indians as the third best team in baseball.

The Cleveland Indians.

Karl Ravech tries to put a nice little spin on it to make it not sound as awful as it is....

KR: You seem to do it really on what's going on as we speak, ESPN.com kind of looks at like the potential for these teams

JK: Yeah I don't look at potential. Potential just gets you fired, that's what I've been told by a bunch of managers. I'm not going to get fired because of this.

When the Indians are struggling to hit that 70 win mark in September due to awful pitching and utilizing 3-4 replacement level bats on an everyday basis, I beg of you, ESPN management, watch this video on repeat 60 times like I just did, and teach Mr. I'm-not-going-to-get-fired a little lesson about getting cocky about.....not getting fired.

Morgan Ensberg's Perplexing Rage

Morgan Ensberg lashed out about Manny:

I am a Christian guy. There are a lot of emotions going through my mind as I type this. The most prevalent one is anger. Here is what I would like to say?

How could you? You coward! You are a fake and a cheat and now you want to retire? No way! You get back out there and you take the pain. You stand in front of the cameras and tell us that you are a fake. Tell us that you only care about money. Look directly into the camera and tell us that you don’t give a crap about baseball and that this was always about money! Look into the camera and tell us that you are so stupid and entitled that you are willing to put anything in your body if you think it will help. You took OVULATION MEDICINE DUDE. You were such a fake, that you put medicine in your body that helps you produce eggs for reproduction. You should have eaten raisins. I hear they help you think.

That is how I feel. Those are the feelings that make me want to lash out. But I am not going to say that. I am going to calm down and think before I type. I’m going to step away from the computer and think about what my actions mean. I’m going to walk into the living room and hug Beckett, Chase, and Ava. I’m going to think about my wife Christi and thank God for allowing me to have a wife who loves me. I’ll be right back.

I uh...there's just so much I don't know what to say here...Let's see what the internets have to say.

No hyperbole intended

but this might be the most breathtakingly stupid thing Bill Simmons has ever written. I'm serious, I really feel that way. I want to do a longer Simmons post about his whole NBA power rankings series that's out right now but it's been a rough week. So in anticipation of hopefully writing something over the weekend I give you this as an appetizer (re: Dwight Howard)

I can't give him my MVP vote for one simple reason: he leaves something on the table every night. Dwight Howard should be the league's most dominant player. Physically, there's nobody remotely like him. True story: I was watching SportsCenter the other night. My wife noticed Howard on TV and gasped, "Oh my God, who's that?" the same way you'd comment on the 12 year old in Little League who's six inches taller than everyone else and has the makings of a mustache already. When I told her it was Howard, she said, "Just looking at him, it seems like he should be the best player, right?" Exactly.

Wow. I just.... if you're like me, that leaves you speechless. That's indescribably horrendous. Hats of to you, Bill. Even though you only write four columns a year you still manage to bring the tardfuckery. In bulk.

More to come (I hope).

Rick Sutcliffe Spouts a Gem

Tonight's Twins-Yankees game got rained out. Consequently, ESPN aired a bunch of look-ins at various other games around the league - inspiring one ESPN head to encourage us to "see a few players you wouldn't normally see". Gee, it sure would be nice to see those players in regularly scheduled programming, instead of the usual Yankees-Red Sox-Cubs repetition.

But the best part came later in the broadcast, when Rick Sutcliffe began to describe the way winners help their team win in baseball. He said that these winners go into the dugout and say:

"I don't know if we're going to win this game, but we're not going to lose it"

Ladies and gentlemen, winners acknowledge the possibility of a tie.

Also, what does Rick Sutcliffe know about winning? He spent most of his career on the Cubs.

Ross Douthat...if only I could come up with a clever pun regarding his name vis-a-vis this article!

Maybe something incorporating feminine hygiene products and head apparel? Here is the article, where he niggles and nitpicks a small point in a Bill James article which attempts to argue that America's priority on athletic development has potentially hindered its literary development

I'm going to get right to the point, because I'm hungover as all shit: America is like 100x the size of London of Shakespeare's time and has produced untold hundreds of superstar athletes. It was produced over the past 50 years, very few writers who would be called literary geniuses (Roth, Delillo, McCarthy, Wallace, whatever).

No matter how you nitpick about Andy Sonnastine coming from BFE, America, you still are a douchehat (I finally came up with one!) who has completely missed the point and exposed yourself as a mouthbreather of the reading comprehension set.

Time to roll out the ol' "something that doesn't suck" label

Because Chris W forwarded me a real winner. Dan Wetzel, the floor is yours.

I can't decide who I hate more: the NFL and its owners, or the NCAA and its administrators. I guess I don't necessarily have to choose. I can just hope they all contract lupus. And I do.

Baseball Is a Team Sport: Mike Tully is a Fool

Today's post comes to you courtesy of Mike Tully of the New York Times - a rarely-critiqued news outlet here on FJayM. But this one's worth the time. This one actually suggests that really bad players are not that bad, and that really good players are not that good, and it hits on some classic FJayM fallacies - both logical and statistical.

In fact, I'm going to be so bold as to slap the "wrongest thing that has ever been said about baseball" on this post. That's because the writer implies that David Eckstein is better than Carlos Beltran, that Jonny Gomes is better than Joey Votto, and that signing Carlos Pena was a masterstroke by the Chicago Cubs. It's amazing how he has managed to pick one statistic that justifies all kinds of stupid conclusions and throws them into one article. It's a smorgasbord of stupid.

[For some reason, the article opens and closes with a long extended comparison to North Carolina women's soccer. I've cut that part out]

To Create Winners, you have to Find Winners

Uh oh. The title has ominous foreboding to it. Maybe the Cubs should just hire Charlie Sheen as a consultant?

David Eckstein is one player whose contribution far exceeded his talent. A walk-on in college and a 19th-round draft pick, he still managed to make the postseason in 4 of his 10 major league seasons, played on two championship teams and was the most valuable player of the 2006 World Series.

This is so stupid. This is classic stupid. This is the epitome of the stupid Eckstein fallacy. Why does Tully define Eckstein's "contribution" as making the postseason, which is a team acheivement, instead of looking at Eckstein's individual contributions... say his sole season above 100 OPS+ or his two seasons above 3 WAR.

On the other end of the spectrum one might find Carlos Beltran, a four-time All-Star with the Mets. While he recovered from knee surgery last year, they won 48 of their first 88 games, and were only four games out of the National League East lead at the All-Star break. Then Beltran rejoined the team. The Mets went 31-43 (.419) the rest of the way and finished 18 games out of first place.

Carlos Beltran did have a bad season last year, but let the record show that Beltran, in comparison with Eckstein, has had exactly four times as many seasons above 3 WAR. And Eckstein is even two years older.

Their decline cannot be attributed solely to Beltran, but the Mets did not improve with him in the lineup.

What a stupid sentence. Their decline barely be attributed to Beltran. The man plays one position out of nine. How hard is that to comprehend?

On the other hand, the Mets went 42-36 (.538) with Ruben Tejada, the team’s highest winning percentage among position players with extended time on the field. Ike Davis had the best winning percentage at .503 (74-73); only David Wright was on the field for more Mets victories (75).

RUBEN TEJADA HIT .213 WITH A .588 OPS AND WAS ACTUALLY WORSE THAN A REPLACEMENT PLAYER LAST YEAR. A REPLACEMENT PLAYER LAST YEAR WOULD PROBABLY HAVE BEEN ABOUT AS GOOD AS RUBEN TEJADA. WHO THE HECK IS RUBEN TEJADA ANYWAYS.

Baseball insiders cite factors like cohesion, rhythm and percentages to defend the idea of sticking with tried-and-true players. They argue, with some justification, that baseball involves failure and that players need time to work through it.

That time is during little league baseball, high school baseball, sometimes in college baseball, and minor leauge baseball. Not in Major League baseball.

Also, what are "cohesion", "rhythm" and "percentages"? Doesn't one of those things not belong with the others? I don't understand that sentence at all.

The Yankees’ Derek Jeter, who has won five championships, is coming off the worst offensive season of his 16-year career. Now the team is debating whether he or Brett Gardner should bat leadoff. No matter where Gardner bats, he should play; the Yankees were 93-57 (.620) with him in the lineup, and 2-10 without him. They seemed to get along just fine (21-4) without Alex Rodriguez. In the games Jeter played, the Yankees were 92-65.

Argh. So much stupid. Of all the arguments and claptrap I've heard this week about Jeter heading into this season, this is the worst. Seriously, people, shut up about Jeter and just let the poor man fade away into mediocrity without hyperanalyzing his slow descent.

Also, how did Derek Jeter win five championships? I thought the Yankees won five championships. Who were all those other guys in pinstripes? Were they batboys for Jeter? WAS SCOTT BROSIUS NOTHING BUT A HOTDOG VENDOR?

Should teams be slaves to such statistics? No, but they should notice. And they might be surprised.

Should teams pay any attention at all to such statistics? Not really. I guess these statistics are kind of worth noticing, but I think they are probably about 50th in importance, as statistics go. I'd rather judge a hitter by HBP (hey, at least it contributes to his own OBP) than by this stat.

Last season Cincinnati won the National League Central at 91-71 (.562). But in games Joey Votto, the league M.V.P., played, the Reds went 83-67 (.553). Six regular teammates finished with a higher percentage than Votto’s: Scott Rolen, .586; Jay Bruce, .574; Brandon Phillips, Orlando Cabrera and Jonny Gomes, .561; and Drew Stubbs, 560.

We're taking about a difference of four or five wins in each of these cases. Over a full season of baseball, anything can cause a differential of four or five wins. This is the exact opposite of a sample size fallacy - this is a huge generalization about winning that has nothing to do with individual production.

Absolutely nothing can be concluded from the above paragraph. Joey Votto is approximately one hundred times better than all those other Reds players, and any clown who cherry-picks win stats to try and even weakly suggest otherwise has his head in a sack.

Similarly, Texas was 71-62 (.534) with Josh Hamilton, the American League M.V.P., in the lineup. He finished behind several fellow position players: Ian Kinsler (.592), Elvis Andrus (.568), David Murphy (.565) and Michael Young (.561).

Bench Josh Hamilton! Bench Joey Votto! Call the fire department!

This is also a completely pointless paragraph. Nothing can be concluded from this generalization except that apparently individuals on a baseball team cannot win every game completely by themselves, even if he hits .359 and his OPS is 1.044.

Carlos Pena, who had a miserable 2010 season for Tampa Bay, is a remarkable example. He batted .196 and had 158 strikeouts, but the Rays were 88-56 (.611) with him in the lineup, the best among their regular players. They were 22 games above .500 with Pena, two games under without him. The Chicago Cubs signed Pena for one year and $10 million.

Awesome. The Chicago Cubs, who have had over a century now to get adjusted to failure, are now all set to win the 2011 World Series.

St. Louis traded shortstop Brendan Ryan to Seattle in the off-season after his career-worst .223 batting average. The Cardinals were 17 games over .500 with Ryan, seven games under without him. In his place is Ryan Theriot, whose Cubs went 43-53 with him in the lineup last year, 32-34 without him.

I predict the Cubs will surge past the Cardinals this year! Based solely on Ryan Theriot and Brendan Ryan!

Sometimes teams will find a player with an X-factor that goes way beyond talent. Leo Durocher once said that second baseman Eddie Stanky could not hit, field or run — all he could do was win. But Stanky was not helpless. He retired in 1953 with a .410 career on-base percentage, among the best in history.

Let's rewrite that sentence. Eddie Stanky could not hit, field or run - all he could do was walk, which helps a whole team win. Leo Durocher's statement was meant to be interpreted figuratively, and it's pretty stupid when New York Times writers interpret it literally to support a stupid thesis.

On-base percentage was not valued in the 1940s and ’50s, and that is the point. Certain players have always done things that keep them on the winning side, even if they are not always recognized.

Except that they ARE recognized - anyone who knows anything about Eddie Stanky could quickly recognize his walks and their resultant value to a team. That's why he was kept in the starting lineup.

Well, the 2011 season starts on Thursday. Get excited, baseball fans! After game #1 of the season, if your team wins, they should run the same lineup out there for the next game. After all, they will have won 100% of the games with those players!

Blogger Makes Completely Libelous Charge of Racism, More Importantly: Misuses Irony

Famed blogger Murray Chass has written a blog post on his blog attacking Stan Musial for having a racist restaurant policy 50 years ago, a charge even the son of the alleged victim has roundly refuted. We won't dwell on refuting that since most everyone on the internet with a brain has tackled Chass's blogging ignorance and insistence on reusing a source that he's already admitted needs to be fact-checked much better (that's bloggers for you!).

No, this is FJayM--we're much much more interested in nitpicking people's use of the term "ironic" (or "literally"):

The word ironic is overused, but it would seem to me we could consider it ironic that the nation’s first black president awards the nation’s highest civilian honor to someone who discriminated against blacks.

Lol. This reminds me of the Lionel Hutz quotation from the Simpsons:

Homer, I don't use the word "hero" very often, but you are the greatest hero in American history.

Fin.

Larry B Checks In

After weeks of our desperate emails pleading with him to just give us the slightest sign that he was alive--not being tortured in a vietnamese prison camp, or washed up on some rice paddy's shoreline riddled with malaria--Larry B finally contacted us. He contacted us to player hate on Scott Miller.

The following are the words of Larry B, who has apparently gone native a la Colonel Kurtz:

Been a slow month here on the blogg.  I've been on vacation for most of it, and will be until the weekend but I decided I might as well pop in and throw something up very quickly.  And when you haven't been on the internet in a while and need to quickly find bad sportswriting to make fun of, there's only one person to look to: Scott Miller.  (The answer is no longer Simmons because he doesn't write anymore and I refuse to listen to his podcasts.)  You can always trust Scott to write poorly and uncleverly from a boring angle about a lame topic.

We know the sun sets in the West.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

But is it setting on the Angels' Empire?

Yeah, their run of winning 93 games in an easy division and promptly being bounced out of the playoffs in the divisional round is finally coming to an end.

Coming off their first lower-division AL West finish in eight seasons, the Los Angeles Angels are stepping into their most pivotal summer since Mike Scioscia moved into the manager's office in 1999.

Overdramatic? Not with a team that is getting neither younger nor quicker.

Is quickness highly valued when building a baseball team?  Similarly valuable attributes: height, intelligence, ability to recover quickly from hangovers.

There were legitimate reasons why the Angels last summer stumbled to their first sub-.500 mark since 2003.

This just in: the Angels were not merely an unlucky team in 2010, a year in which they fielded a considerably less talented team than they had in previous years and subsequently won about 15 fewer games. 

Just as there were legitimate reasons (hint: $$$) why they whiffed on their No. 1 free-agent target last winter when Carl Crawford signed with Boston. And why they swung and missed on Mark Teixeira (Yankees) and CC Sabathia (ditto) three winters ago. And why they bade farewell to Chone Figgins, Vladimir Guerrero and John Lackey two winters ago.

But is regression in the standings mutually exclusive from their recent run of unseasonably cold winters?

Could their recent shittiness have something to do with the fact that they have lost a bunch of good players and replaced them with shitty ones?  Your guess is as good as mine!

The Angels are betting a hard yes on that.

Which is a reflection of the fact that they're one of the most overrated organizations in baseball.  Specifically their front office and their dickhead “GRRR DERP HUSTLE GRIT PLAY THE GAME THE RIGHT WAY” manager.

Without Figgins and, after slugger Kendry Morales fractured his lower left leg in late May, their offense dipped in the severe, lose-your-stomach manner that the Matterhorn causes its riders at nearby Disneyland.

Unclever, shitty writing.  And coincidentally (OR DO I MEAN IRONICALLY?) Figgins went on to have a pathetically horriawful barftastic offensive season in Seattle.  But yeah anyways. 

They were so off-balance that they scored 202 fewer runs in 2010 than they did in 2009. Not only was that the largest drop in the majors, but their 681 total runs were the Angels' fewest in a non-strike-shortened season since 1992. Hello, Luis Polonia.

HELLO, IRRELEVANT EARLY 90s PLAYER REFERENCE!  Scott just got his honorary degree from the Jeff Pearlman school of baseball writing.

The fix? With Morales back in the middle of the lineup this summer, the Angels are sure a clogged offense again will flow.

Classic Scoscia-esque word choice regarding those offensive problems.  “The reason our offense went in the shitter has nothing to do with losing a bunch of good hitters- it's because we're clogging things up too much.  Gotta get them to FLOW again.  Gotta get from first to third on singles.  GOTTA DO THE LITTLE THINGS.”

"He's very important," says Jered Weaver, the projected opening day starter. "Obviously, having him go out last year put a damper on our season. Anytime you lose a guy like that, it's tough."

Teammate acknowledges hurt teammate's relevance.  And zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

But on opening day, Morales will not be in the field behind Weaver. He instead will open the season on the disabled list. And nearly 11 months following his ankle surgery, that's worrisome.

"One thing we've talked about is that Morales is going to be more important at the end of the season than at the beginning of the season," hitting coach Mickey Hatcher says.

Right, it'll be much better for them to start cold and then get hot in August and September to win 80 games than to start hot and then fade down the stretch.

The addition of veteran outfielder Vernon Wells is a big upgrade over Juan Rivera in left field all the way around -- with the bat, in the field and in the clubhouse (especially work ethic).

Burnsauce on Rivera.

But by missing on Crawford, the Angels' leadoff position remains unsettled (Maicer Izturis and others). And by missing over the winter on Adrian Beltre (Texas), third base likely will remain a revolving door (Izturis, Alberto Callaspo or, ahem, Brandon Wood).

Hopefully some of those shitty hitters can help the offense start to flow again.

Which puts a target squarely on Morales' back. If the Angels don't want to watch defending champ Texas run away again, or even emerging Oakland, Morales must have two good legs and one mean bat.

Unclever, shitty writing. He'll also need at least three mean teeth!

His biggest issue now is not running in a straight line, but cutting and turning on the run (such as on the bases or in the field).

Such as while playing baseball, or doing any of the things you do when you play baseball. That's a great parenthetical.  I love it.  I enjoy blogging about bad sportswriting (such as you might find on the internet, or in newspapers, or in magazines, or in books). 

Which means the next issue is this: After nearly a year away, is Morales' bat capable of picking up where it left off?

"I think he's got the personality where it can," Hatcher says. "This guy, he's like Guerrero. He loves the excitement, he loves the challenge.

More evidence that the Angels are run by diptards.

"Anybody else, I'd be concerned. But I'm not concerned about him getting in the box. There may be some times when he looks ugly, but he can still hurt the pitcher."

Yup.

There were enough ugly moments last year with the Angels' lineup that simply limiting them in 2011 will be an improvement.

Which will be super easy once Morales comes back from his injury, sometime in late Whoknowswhen.

"There were a number of components," Scioscia says. "First and foremost was the dynamics of trying to set the table with some guys in front of the middle of our lineup, and Figgy was part of that.

He always took the extra base!  That's what made him so good!

And then losing Kendrys, it changed everybody's roles in the lineup to where I think guys were trying to do a little too much.

Clogging things up!

And guys we anticipated, Rivera had a tough first half, Erick Aybar and Bobby Abreu struggled.

Erick Aybar struggled because he sucks.  Juan Rivera struggled because he pretty much sucks.  Bobby Abreu struggled because he's 37.  But again, these are the Angels, so they didn't see any of that coming.

"A lot of stuff was related. I don't think it was one thing."

The best analysis I've ever heard Scoscia offer on any topic.

As for 2011, it all starts with Morales' recovery.

"He's fine," Hatcher insists. "There ain't nothing wrong with his hitting."

Other than the fact that he can't do anything after he hits the ball besides run in a straight line to the right field foul pole.

Maybe not. But few can hit in the majors without two good feet. And the quicker Morales gets to that point, the quicker the Angels will be able to stand tall on their own two legs.

Unclever, shitty ending.