I wrote this in the comments of Joe Posanki’s blog, but what the heck. Joe was talking about how the most valuable player race would go in the American League this season.
The MVP, in my opinion, is Jose Bautista, but let’s get in the minds of the voters. None of these guys are on steroids, but voting is going to come down to who is doing the most fake steroids. Therefore, to baseball writers:
4. Jacoby Ellsbury. There is not a shred of proof that he is on PEDs. But during their championship run, everyone else on the Sox were injecting themselves with any fluid they could find. So that means it’s the culture there, and Jacoby should pay for writers not seeing it earlier. Odds Of Steroid Use: 1,000,000%, 4th place.
3. Jose Bautista: You just gotta at least ask the question! It was also proven by ESPN.com that a mysterious “man in white” was able to fire darts filled to bursting with steroids into Jose’s neck during play last year after certain pitches were released from the pitcher’s hands. Clearly on steroids, but most writers aren’t sure if they are legal in Canada or not, so he may get some slight benefit. Odds of Steroid Use: 4,000%, 3rd place.
2. Curtis Granderson. They can’t punish A-Rod for his steroid use here, but what we saw with Bagwell being denied is that a different guy on the same team is good enough. (Bagwell the one being punished for Ken Caminiti.) Sorry, Curtis. Odds of Steroid Use: 1,000%, 2nd Place
1. Justin Verlander. Nobody cares about steroid use on a team that lost 170 games in a season like the Tigers did a few years back. Could be punished for Miguel Cabrera’s behavior, but 1) Cabrera will be punished in this vote for Cabrera, and 2) Scotch? NOT A STEROID. 25 wins is a big middle finger to last year’s AL CY vote and, don’t ask the voters how, Moneyball as written by Billy Beane. Odds of Steroids Use: 0%, 1st Place
From this awful piece of nonsense.
Several Jays had extreme splits in 2010. Bautista, for example, had a 1.118 OPS (on-base plus slugging) with 33 homers at home but an .879 OPS and 21 dingers on the road. First baseman Adam Lind had a .759 OPS with 15 homers in Toronto but a .660 OPS with eight bombs on the road. Second baseman Aaron Hill? His home-road OPS split was .730-.605.
Lookout, guys! Amy K. Nelson just discovered home/road splits and is ON THE CASE! Ha ha ha!
I took a look at Derek Jeter’s home/road splits in 2010. His OPS at home was .790. His OPS on the road was .633. Since this is a greater split than Lind or Hill, I can only conclude that in the few tenths of a second Jeter has to make a decision on whether or not to hit a ball, he is able to identify hand signals of a man sitting 260 feet away at New Yankee Stadium. Possessing the gritty heart of a champion, this is even more impressive when done in New York, because 90% of all Yankee fans are “clogging the signal” by giving each other the middle finger.
Astonishingly, Jacoby Ellsbury’s home/road splits in 2010 were .304/.556 in favor of playing on the road. Now, I should mention that Ellsbury only played 18 games last year, but making wildly retarded conclusions based on complete fucking nonsense that is obvious noise to anyone with a fourth-grader’s knowledge of baseball would seem to be “in bounds” for what Ms. Nelson came up with here.
I fucking love how a profession — baseball writer / sports reporter — that literally could not have cared less when steroids were making a mockery of the game is now suddenly sounding the alarm, throwing elbows and putting the gumdrop on the police cruiser because Black Dad looked at the miserable lineup he was left with last year and told everyone to swing for the fences. You don’t get a Sports Pulitzer for figuring out why Jose Bautista became the best player in baseball “suddenly,” assholes.
They’ve been playing baseball for over a hundred years. This clenched-lip determination to ensure that Jose Bautista doesn’t make a fool of everyone covering the sport is adorable. But it is almost inevitable that a guy who was unheralded was going to hit like Babe Ruth Lite suddenly. I’m willing to explain what happened, however, and it goes to the first rule of reporting: nobody covering an event or story is going to know what happened better than a fan of the team.
Jose Bautista could always crush left-handed pitching. He’s not really doing anything new there.
Jose Bautista entered a few organizations that have no idea what they were doing (Pittsburgh, Baltimore) and who had no idea what they were doing in 2004 (Kansas City, Tampa Bay).
Jose Bautista was acquired by a team (Toronto) that found itself finally admitting, after 18 years, to start a youth movement and see what they had in a few vets. A lot of people gave Cito Gaston shit for the way he managed when he came back to the Blue Jays, but the guy is one of the few managers in the history of the game to win back-to-back championships. If you ignore things like lineup construction and logic when giving guys “days off” he’s pretty good at what he does, and it was a travesty that he never ended up getting a managerial job with another team. Because of the laughable salary commitments the current state of the game afford a couple franchises in the American League East, Toronto was absolutely primed to unearth nuggets of talent passed over by other teams. Randy Ruiz, in a small sample size, had similar numbers to Bautista in 2009, but elected to play in Japan when he was getting jerked around by the Jays. The same people that saw that Bautista’s play was sustainable did not think Ruiz’s was, and that was proven to be correct.
No I’m just kidding, there’s a man wearing white who can freeze time and give all the Jays batters hand signals regarding what pitch is coming. This is why Aaron Hill went from belting 35 home runs in a season to belting 35 pop-ups in a week last year.
Somebody might tell you that MLB has their act together when it comes to understanding the opportunities that the Internet offers the average fan to catch their favorite team. THIS IS COMPLETE BULLSHIT. You might even hear them say that Bud Selig should be congratulated for these advancements, as if fucking Selig has ever been on the Internet in his entire life. There isn’t a single commissioner in sports doing a good job right now, but that’s another story.
Here’s a breakdown on the sheer incompetence of getting your game. (Please note that I am writing this with the perspective of a guy living in a different market than his team – I live in Colorado and only care about the Blue Jays. If you are within like 200 fucking miles of a stadium, you get to enter the world of PROXIES and various other stupid horseshit.)
DIRECTV MLB EXTRA INNINGS
So, it’s Saturday and there’s nothing I’d rather do than climb out of bed, shake about ten pounds of cat hair off me, and catch Roy Halladay vs Cliff Lee, in what should be demonstrative proof that Lee winning the Cy Young Award last year was fucking horseshit.
Directv is offering a “preview” of MLB Extra Innings. It’s $160 for the entire year, and honestly, with how much the equivalent is for the NFL, that sounds like a great deal. (I will go ahead and assume that Directv’s NFL Ticket will break $240 in September.)
The problem is that they don’t broadcast all the games! Are you fucking kidding me? And more – how is this game not on? This is fucking inexcusable. I know that Lee is turning back into a shitbag, but for fuck’s sake.
More, it already takes effort to keep track of the regular game times for the Jays. I work until 7 or 8 PM, and their home games start at 5:07PM MDT. I’m not physically around to use the Directv solution, but let’s say I get out early (or the Jays are on the west coast) – I have to seriously consult Directv’s schedule as well? Fuck that. Seriously, fuck that. Again, I understand if they can’t broadcast Rockies games, but otherwise they need to seriously fuck off.
MLB.TV
This is $14.95 a month. And maybe it’s okay this year, but I’ve had it for the 2008 and 2007 seasons, and it’s just shit. Something about it isn’t compatible with our anti-virus software at work, which is fucking amazing, in so much that all anti-virus software has bloated themselves into some kind of security suite, and that whoever put MLB.tv together can’t just give you a link to a a video or audio stream. And Christ, the thing is always locking up. This is a miserable ripoff – again, maybe it gets better in like mid-July, when interest has cooled off and there are less people catching the games, but I had games locking up on me at that point as well last year. (If your experiences with it are better this year, that is awesome, and do feel free to describe what it’s like in the comments. I’m honestly curious.)
iPHONE GAMEDAY APP
This is okay, I guess – it’s $10 for the entire year. Audio only, except – except! They will put small videos of clutch hits and such for you to watch, if you really want to. I’m fine with audio-only, as long as I can choose my own announcers, which I can with this.
The app lets you click on the box score, and see who is fielding where – it’s got lots of easy-to-implement stuff that reminds me of how the Diamond Mind baseball game is set up.
I did buy this, and I think it’s good, overall. The really maddening part is how they deal with commercials. The audio feed goes silent, but not immediately! I honestly think some asshole is sitting there with his finger on the “mute” button at the source, and he simply forgets to hit the button right away. (The most annoying commercial in the world right now is the one for Super-8 on Toronto’s the FAN station.) I’m fairly certain that the same guy forgets to consistently put the sound back on right away .
ACTUALLY GOING TO THE GAMES
Well, yes, this would be best.
So, I don’t know. There really is no perfect solution for catching the games live. Directv is too demanding, MLB.tv is an enormous pain in the ass, and the iPhone app can’t get me consistent audio. The whole thing is fucked.
J. P. Ricciardi has been the general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays since November 14th, 2001. The Blue Jays have not made the playoffs since he was hired. It is my understanding that 2009 will be the last year of his current deal with the team. And I don’t know, but to me it seems like he’s currently doing a fine job?
If you take the stretch of time as a whole, sure – he’s failed to put together a team that has made the playoffs. But honestly, just looking at 2008:
… I believe that his drafting record was skewered by taking Russ Adams (who has not contributed at the major league level), coupled with drafting Rickey Romero (a pitcher) over Troy Tulowitzki. But he’s otherwise got some nice players coming through the system. The young pitching has been fantastic.
Taking a look at some other moves:
Where did J.P. fuck up? Keeping Shannon Stewart over Reed Johnson was a complete and total mistake – forget about Reed’s production, Stewart simply couldn’t stay healthy. Plus, he made it difficult for me to discuss baseball with some of my friends, as that name meant “Playboy Model” to them. Sure, nobody could have predicted that Johnson would be healthy for an entire season, but he did and he was under contract. Not the biggest failing, and I hope Reed gets a ring with the Cubs, but still.
J.P. paid the A’s to play Frank Thomas this year, which is a little awkward. (Then again, he did get Frank Thomas’s salary off the books for 2009, which absolutely had to happen.)
Whoever decided to bat Marco Scutaro second for the entire year fucked up, but that seems to be something that former manager John Gibbons, J.P. and Cito Gaston were all delighted to do. I’m sure they all get the fucking shakes if Scutaro gets stuck in traffic before the game and there is even the slightest chance they can’t trot him out there as often as possible.
… Honestly, someone tell me why Ricciardi shouldn’t at least finish his contract. He’s doing better at his job than I am. This team isn’t going to the playoffs because it couldn’t hit with runners in scoring position for over a month. But THIS IS THE TEAM THE INTERNET, as a whole WANTED. RBIs are meaningless! (I’m speaking as The Internet right now.) Work as deep into those counts as possible! Walks are king! Don’t bunt, steal, sacrifice! I had to laugh (OK, I’m back), watching this team before John Gibbons was fired, because it really was the team that sabermetrics had argued for. Er, if sabermetrics were sentient. It takes a special, unique, shittily-hitting team of legendary design to not make the playoffs with arguably the best defense and pitching in the league.
I’m not going to fault Ricciardi for getting passed by the Tampa Bay Rays, either. Quite simply, there was no plan in Tampa. There remains no plan in Tampa. Maybe that’s a huge burn on having a development “plan,” and if so, so be it. Tampa was going to draft first overall until things turned around. They weren’t focusing on a philosophy, or any kind of strategy, or any sort of “five year plan.” There was no accountability to a fan base, as they did not have a fan base. I am reminded of a discussion on the Interactive Fiction mud a few years back – someone said that Alex Rodriguez was making more than the entire roster of the Devil Rays, and Neil deMause said, “Alex Rodriguez is more valuable than the entire roster of the Devil Rays.” And he was right! It wasn’t even close, haha.
(The Rays were simply going to be as laughable as possible until they randomly managed to draft well. And in 2008, it all came together. Joe Maddon is a fine manager, but hey, so is Lou Pinella – he was just involved too early. The trade that was made, years ago, to get Scott Kazmir on the team is a once-per-generation sort of ass-raping, but the Rays would have been perfectly content to keep being the worst franchise in sports, indefinitely. So I really can’t fault other GMs (or Toronto’s GM) for not following the same model.)
So yeah, all things considered, I’m happy to at least let Ricciardi give it another shot, and we’ll see where it goes from there. Someone on the Batter’s Box had mentioned, months ago, that all that is really separating him from being an elite GM is that he has not “ripped off” other general managers, and that can probably be chalked up to luck. I mean, J.P. Ricciardi: must improve: luck? That’s idiotic. If I were told that at my job, I would instantly start defecating in the parking lot, as it was clear that I now work in an accountability-free asylum. But that’s how close J.P. is to having this team ready for the playoffs. He honestly just needs a little more luck.
I play in a Diamond Mind baseball league with seven other fellas. Around the house, it has gained no small amount of notoriety as “text baseball.” The links on how I have faired (second worst for two straight years) are over to the left.
There were three young pitchers for the Blue Jays that I wanted to have on my team, because I am a HOMER. When we draft, you always know how they did in the next two seasons. So last year, I drafted Shaun Marcum, Dustin McGowan and Casey Janssen.
They all had terrible 2006 seasons! They were truly terrible. I don’t remember the exact number runs they gave up (in order to keep them, season after season, we have to play them at least 33% of batters they faced in real life) but it was on the order of a million. That gave my team a Pythagorean record of 4-442.
Kidding! The three of them let up 62 runs in 69 innings. But through it all, I knew how the trio fared in 2007 (which we’re going to play after the World Series). Janssen was dominant as a setup guy, and likely moving to the rotation, where he would get a monster amount of innings. Marcum and McGowan were both above average. Couple these guys with Kazmir, Felix Hernandez, Josh Beckett and Gil Meche and I thought I had an outstanding staff.
Meche came back to earth to start the season, but that was fine. Casey Janssen tore his rotator cuff, so he was out for 2008. Marcum was pitching amazingly well, with like a 2.85 ERA when he went on the DL. And Dustin McGowan just tore his rotator cuff as well.
Good thing I gave them all those innings I GUESS.
Did I learn a lesson? Sure – develop one pitcher if you like, over the course of a season, but otherwise it’s just not worth it. We play six games a week for about 14 weeks and it takes about 50 minutes to play a game. That’s a lot of time to invest in “next year.” Well, not so much the time, as the time of the games plus the time picking the keys off the floor and putting them back into a punched-up keyboard.
