Other Aces Include Paul Maholm, Jason Hammel, And Jo-Jo Reyes

A current headline on ESPN.com’s MLB page reads:

Rangers activate ace Millwood from disabled list

Kevin Millwood:

• 2008: 48 IP, 4.88 ERA, 1.69 WHIP, 29 K, 19 BB, 5 HR, .808 OPS against
• 2007: 172.2 IP, 5.16 ERA, 1.62 WHIP, 123 K, 67 BB, 19 HR, .812 OPS against
• 2006: 215 IP, 4.52 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, 157 K, 53 BB, 23 HR, .733 OPS against

2008 has been bad, 2007 was bad, and 2006 was average. Millwood has had some good seasons, but this is a stretch.

Dustin Pedroia Is Just Begging To Be Called Out

Dustin Pedroia thinks the Red Sox “play the game the right way.” Although I hate that phrase (do you ever see a batter round the bases clockwise after hitting a homer?), I completely disagree. This is why (click the image):

A-Rod does this and is continually derided for it. Pedroia does it and we never hear of it again. Maybe it’s not Pedroia I hate (I do), but the people in position to call him out on his hypocrisy and instead do no such thing.

Do Not Fuck With Albert Pujols

If you get in his way, he will destroy you.

This Is A Stretch

Currently, ESPN’s headline for this afternoon’s Yankees-Mets recap reads “Santana shows Yankees his best stuff in Mets’ victory.”

Johan Santana (5/17/08): 7.2 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 5 K, 3 HR

I could be wrong, but his 7/6/04 start might have been a bit better. Or 9/19/04. 8/12/05. 9/17/05. 6/13/06. 8/19/07 was okay too.

You get my point. This is a stretch.

Jimmy Is Blue, Should We Be Too?

The signs of the impending apocalypse seem to grow more numerous every day. A black man with an African name will likely be the next President; there’s a pregnant dude (he is actually pregnant, I swear); and that’s just the real world. There are plenty of omens in baseball as well: the Rays are in first place while the Yankees are in last. And now this.

Jim Edmonds, arguably the most beloved St. Louis Cardinal of the decade and surely the greatest center fielder in franchise history, is now sporting Cubbie blue.

Plenty of smarter, more highly-paid people have already spilled lots of ink on the subject, but I just needed to share my thoughts and vent a little bit.

As a baseball decision: Anywhere from no net gain to very poor. Obviously, the Cubs are spending chump change on Jimmy, who will live comfortably off of the contract that the Padres released him from and which Walt Jocketty stupidly made in the afterglow of the 2006 World Series. It’s a low-risk signing, which is almost always good. But I don’t know that there is a high reward here. Most scouts who saw him with the Padres were looking for where to stick the fork – as in, he’s totally done. A few thought he was improving right before his release. None of his numbers or advanced stats were satisfactory. His presence also creates an opportunity cost, as he is effectively blocking Felix Pie, a stud-prospect with loads of upside, from contributing to the big club (though that probably wouldn’t be happening anyway with Piniella’s infuriating insistence on putting Reed Johnson out there every other day).

However, Edmonds’ numbers (offense and defense both) may have been depressed by playing in the Grand Canyon. I mean, Petco Park. Wrigley, with its snug outfield dimensions, crazy winds, and drunken, middle-aged Pollacks reaching over the fence for every flyball, could help Edmonds’ performance if he does have something left in the tank. The Cubs are the likeliest team from the Central to make the playoffs, so if Jimmy hangs around, sportswriters will hail the signing for bringing veteran experience to a weird, patchwork team. But we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

As an ethical dilemma: I won’t address the issues Cubs fans will have with this signing, but I’m sure there are Cards fans out there who think that this makes Edmonds dead to us. To that I say a hearty, “Fuck you.” It’s his prerogative to seek gainful employment from whoever offers it to him. I’ve said it before: players today just don’t care about these deep-seated rivalries between teams. Unless there’s a personal beef between individual players or managers, Cubs-Cards and Yankees-Red Sox is just meaningless hoopla for the media and fans to have fun. It is fun, and sometimes people get hurt, but it doesn’t affect the players.

Jerry Seinfeld has a well-known bit about how sports is just “rooting for laundry:” personnel changes don’t matter because we identify with the uniform more than anything. When Edmonds was traded to San Diego, I remember thinking that the laundry wouldn’t matter for this guy. Of course, Edmonds-as-Cub causes more cognitive dissonance than Edmonds-as-Padre, but I will have no problem rooting for him until he finally hangs it up for good.

I, like many other Cardinals fans, identified #15 as the heart of the team in the generally very successful years from 2000-2006. He was never the single best player on the team – but that was mostly because he played with Mark McGwire for two years and Albert Pujols for six.

2004 was the year of the MV3, but it was a defining season for Edmonds. Pujols just had a normal year (like Hank Aaron had normal years) while Rolen tore up the league and got MVP buzz in the first half before a slow, achy finish (have fun with that, Toronto!). Edmonds’ performance before the All-Star break was in line with his career averages. Then in July: .381/.475/.952 with 13 home runs. August: .359/.519/.795 with 10 more dingers.

After winning 105 games in the regular season, Edmonds made two iconic plays in the span of 24 hours during the NLCS. In Game Six, he hit a triumphant, no-doubt home run to win the game in the bottom of the twelfth.

In the second inning of Game Seven, with two men on and one out, Edmonds made a spectacular catch to preserve for the Cardinals a dubious matchup of Jeff Suppan versus Roger Clemens.

Watch the video of the catch on that page. Notice he was shaded to shallow right center and made that catch in deep left center. He emerged with a fucking divot in his belt buckle. I would love to see Andruw Jones try to make that catch on that play.

This is just the pinnacle of the impact Jim Edmonds had in St. Louis, of the memories he has made for me and so many others. That’s something no change of laundry can ever erase.

Okay, Fine. I’ll Bite.

I’ve tried to stay out of this whole debate about Joba Chamberlain’s celebrations. This is primarily because it is a stupid discussion and I don’t care. I wish he’d calm down a little, but ultimately this is not that big of a deal. But because the sports media seems intent on shoving this down our throats, and crotchety old curmudgeons keep saying essentially “this never would have happened back in my day!”, I am going to issue a friendly reminder to these curmudgeons who probably don’t even know what the internet is so why am I even doing this. Reminder starts…now:

In conclusion, get off Chamberlain’s back or start getting on others’.

Fire Jerry Crasnick?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have found the single laziest answer by an “expert” analysis in “expert” analysis history. I present to you, from yesterday’s ESPN.com chat with Jerry Crasnick, the new nadir of sports insight:

Patrick (Brooklyn, NY): Jorge Posada: Overrated, Hall of Famer, or somewhere in between?

Jerry Crasnick: Patrick, My initial knee jerk reaction is, “Somewhere in between.” But I haven’t checked him out on Baseball-Reference.com lately.

It is definitely way too demanding to ask Mr. Crasnick to check out Jorge Posada’s statistics during a chat in which he is asked baseball questions about baseball players. Apparently, if you don’t catch Mr. Crasnick on a day when he happened to look at a certain player’s numbers, you have no chance in hell of getting your question answered because, well, he just hasn’t seen the player’s numbers lately. But wait!

Ravi (NY): Hi Jerry- I’ve never had a question answered, and I’m hoping you can end that streak for me….Ryan Church: Is his fast start a fluke, or is his production vs lefties (.324/.405/.514) a product of playing everyday? I know Hojo has worked with him to reduce the uppercut in his swing.

Jerry Crasnick: Ravi, Welcome to the chat. Ryan Church has a .752 career OPS against lefties, so it’s not as if he’s been an automatic out against them. If Church says that Howard Johnson has had a positive impact on his performance, you have to believe that’s the case. In Washington, the Nats always thought Church had potential, but they were frustrated with his inability to stay on the field because of nagging injuries. I think this is just a combination of maturity, health and opportunity. (emphasis mine)

I can guarantee you that Mr. Crasnick did not know, off the top of his head, that Ryan Church has a .752 career OPS against lefties. He looked that up on a website. The type of website he visited also probably had Jorge Posada’s career statistics that he could have used to answer Patrick from Brooklyn’s question. But no, that is way too much work. Shame on you, Patrick from Brooklyn. Shame on you.

Fire Jerry Crasnick?

Special K: Clutch Friend, or the Most Clutch?

Just a quick personal note.

My esteemed colleague and wonderful friend Special K is graduating from Vanderbilt University today (it may have already happened in the past hour, I’m not actually sure, I’m pretty drunk). It’s reasonable to say that without his influence and support, I would have left Vanderbilt much sooner, I wouldn’t have discovered a real love of baseball, and this site wouldn’t even exist. His core decency and unblinking rationality will serve him well in life (unless someone mentions a sports team from Massachusetts). I think it is safe to declare Special K The Greatest Clutch Friend In the History of Mayfield 12 and Towers 1303.

So congratulations, Kevin. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there today. Hopefully it wasn’t swelteringly hot and humid during the ceremony and there wasn’t a tornado or a incident involving country music or anything.

Special K will be taking his degree in Advanced Entymology to South America to study the effects of the boll weevil on the Amazon rainforest.*

*Not true

Bonds’ Awesome-Teammate Percentage Is Below The Mendoza Line

Usually I don’t get to dissect articles from my hometown St. Louis Post-Dispatch, because they usually do a good job, especially online. So this column by Jeff Gordon was like a diamond of stupidity in the rough of competent sports journalism:

Is unemployed outfielder Barry Bonds the victim of collusion among Major League Baseball owners? Has Bonds been blackballed because of all those steroid allegations?

I sure don’t know! Why don’t you tell me?

Of course not. Only a blithering idiot would believe such nonsense.

Oh. Well you seem pretty sure, so I’ll trust you.

Bonds isn’t in the big leagues because GMs believe his minuses outweigh his pluses in 2008.

Hmm. So baseball teams don’t want to deal with his “minuses,” yet those have nothing to do with the fact that Bonds is the mascot of steroid use forevermore?

Can he still hit? Probably.

Now that we have that over with . . .

[L]et’s walk through all the negatives:

* Bonds will turn 44 years old in July. How many other 44-year-old outfielders are flourishing in the big leagues this season?

If Bonds gets to play, the answer would be one, I imagine. How many other 44-year-old outfielders are the best player in the history of their sport?

* The former Gold Glove outfielder is now a defensive liability, due to his bad wheels.

Fair enough. If only there were some position that allowed a player to take at-bats and run the bases but didn’t require him to play the field . . . like awndunwnufnerth base or something.

* His salary expectations are out of whack with his diminished baseball value. At this point in his career, Bonds would put up Chris Duncan power numbers -– maybe a little better, perhaps a little worse. (Duncan had slugging percentages of .589 and .480 the last two seasons. Bonds came in at .545 and .565.)

Hmm. That seems like a pretty good reason. Chris Duncan is getting league-minimum, so why should Bonds’ get more?

Wait. My dog just told me that there is another statistic called on-base percentage, of which Bonds is pretty much the undisputed, all-time champion; and that this ability to get on base is the most important aspect of the game and the major part of Bonds’ value as a player.

Why is my dog talking? I really need to stop with the peyote.

* Bonds is, by all accounts, a truly horrendous teammate. He has been a disruptive clubhouse presence dating back to his Pirates days.

*Keesup shakes his head in disappointment*

* His unresolved legal issues would create distractions anywhere he went. With Bonds comes a media circus, an army of reporters poking and prodding at his combative and defiant persona.

Athletes dealing with the media? What’s next, a Negro running for President?!

Given all those factors, big league GMs opted to look elsewhere for offensive help: younger free agents, prime-age trade targets or home-grown players.

Transactions that technically qualify as “younger free agents, prime-age trade targets or home-grown players”: A-Rod’s biggest contract ever, Longoria’s deal after about five days in the majors, the Johan Santana trade, and Cabrera & Dontrelle for the Tigers’ Triple-A affiliate.

The Cardinals are a great example. Manager Tony La Russa floated the idea of bringing Bonds aboard to protect Albert Pujols. Bill DeWitt, John Mozeliak and the rest of the braintrust swatted aside the idea for all the reasons above.

I don’t know what could’ve happened without those guys. How would the simple, delicate sensibilities of St. Louis baseball fans hold up with the media frenzy of a home run chase or the scandal of steroid accusations?

Instead, the Cards relied on home-grown talent (Rick Ankiel, Chris Duncan, Skip Schumaker), bargain signing Ryan Ludwick and Rule 5 addition Brian Barton to man the outfield. The results have been spectacular.

M peyote-fueled talking dog just chimed in again to tell me the outfielders are playing at about the 230th percentile of their aggregate PECOTA projection. Don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

What would Bonds have done? Hit some homers, probably, but otherwise he would have dragged down the group with his egocentric behavior. Imagine how Bonds would have poisoned the clubhouse, honing in on Pujols and offering advice on how to handle his superstar status. One shudders at the thought of that relationship.

Yeah, but you have to admit, the idea of Bonds hitting behind Pujols is enticing.

So enticing that I’m now prepared to say you’re a idiotic piece of shit for not wanting to see it happen. What the fuck is wrong with you? Even if Bonds was suddenly implicated in revealing Anne Frank’s annex to the Nazis, why wouldn’t you want the best hitter in history to protect the best current player?

The Cards are better off without him. And so is every other team.

If this Players’ Association investigation does turn up any signs of collusion, I hope this guy understands that it’s people like him that were giving the teams cover to break the rules.