You Should Start Wedman

What Do the Cardinals Do Now?

2011-12-08T09:21:00.003-06:00

Social media, gchat, and the city of St. Louis are all currently on fire at the moment. 10 years and $250 million later, Albert Pujols has signed with the Los Angeles Angels. While most of our first reactions were to take small shots at fellow Start Wedman writer Cooly, now is the time to dig deeper into the deal and predict what happens because of it. The way I see it, the Cardinals have a few options out there.

1) Stay Put: In Cooly's current stage of denial, he maintains that the lineup is fine the way it is right now. Just beef up the pitching staff, sign Magglio, and head into the season with what the Cardinals have right now. It's just like it was last season. . .right? Oh yeah, Albert is gone.

2) Go International: Sign Yu Darvish and the amazing, ever so great, most terrific baseball player in the universe Yoenis Cespedes. That way they make a splash and become an international phenomenon.

However, then came an amazing idea that not only could work, but could become revolutionary and change Major League Baseball forever. . .

3) Go Inter-league/sport: Instead of signing a couple of veteran players to fill the roster holes, why not reach out to a couple of teams that are currently trying to unload their superstars?

TRADE #1: Lance Lynn, Tony Cruz, 2012 MLB First Round Pick, 2013 MLB First Round Pick, and Cash to the Orlando Magic for 2013 NBA First Round Pick, Dwight Howard, and Hedo Turkoglu

In this trade, the Orlando get a capable big man in Lance Lynn (6' 5" - 250lbs), a back up point guard for Nelson in Tony Cruz, a couple of first round picks, and salary relief for the monster contract of Hedo Turkoglu. The Cardinals nab big man Dwight Howard with an amazing range to snag any ball or throw that might come near him. Turkoglu then comes out of the pen to fill the MLB's 1-Turkish Player-per-team quota. The Cardinals also get a valuable NBA draft pick in order to complete. . .

TRADE #2: Ryan Theriot, PTBNL, 2013 NBA First Round Pick, and Cash to the New Orleans Hornets for Chris Paul

While the city of New Orleans kind of gets the short end of the stick on this deal, Paul was going to leave the Hornets in the end anyways, so they at least obtained a poor man's Steve Nash in Ryan Theriot and a draft pick out of the deal. The Cardinals end up coming away the victor as they immediately pick up a new center fielder that has enough range to cover all three outfield positions who can also lead off and get on base 89% of the time. St. Louis then moves Jon Jay to the bench because he isn't really as good as people think.

So now after the two trades, the Cardinals line-up looks like this:

1. Chris Paul (CF)

2. Furcal (Who they resign and play SS)

3. Berkman (RF)

4. Holliday (LF)

5. Freese (3B)

6. Molina (C)

7. Punto (2B)

8. Pitcher

9. Dwight Howard (1B to provide protection for the pitcher's spot)

While this team has a very different look and feel as the Cardinals that won the 2011 MLB World Series, the 2012 squad has a lot more speed and athleticism. Pujols was great, but who needs him when you have Superman at first and the speedy Paul covering the outfield.

So do not fret St. Louis Cardinals fans, there is still hope for your team. Winter meetings are not over yet and the NBA season still hasn't started. I cannot wait to see how transpires in the upcoming weeks.

As always, I wrote this as fast as humanly possible. If there are mistakes, errors, or simply a lack of mental coherence, just stop reading.

Yoenis Cespedes: The Showcase

2011-11-28T14:55:00.005-06:00

I have paused the showcase video of Yoenis Cespesdes at 5:17 right now because I realized how amazing it is. I am also not sure how I have lived this long in my life without ever seeing a video of this magnitude. Anyways, since it has been a rather slow and boring MLB off-season so far, I have been searching near and far for anything relevant to baseball. Then I found what might be the greatest showcase video ever created. A showcase video so amazing that only a running diary can truly capture what is going through my mind as I write it. Here we go.

0:49 - I honestly had to stop the video to tweet about the sweet inspiring music that is going on right now. While I haven't actually seen his picture or any type of baseball being played, listening to some dude speak Spanish while being accompanied by inspirational music really has me wanting to go dunk a basketball, punch a random individual, or go spend $13 at Taco Bell.

2:09 - UPDATE! The inspirational music, Spanish speaking gentleman, and Star Wars credit words have finally stopped. I have enough adrenaline pumping to punt an elephant.

3:34 - Shortly after the credits stopped rolling, we get a glimpse into the baseball player that is Yoenis Cespedes. Using a rather slow song (no clue what song it is) and extreme slow motion, the viewers get strange little video clips of Yoenis hitting home runs. While I am excited to see him swing the bat and hit the ball as far as he can, the music has me feeling sad and confused. Did Yoenis just get dumped by his girlfriend? This mark in the video is also of a clip where he hits a long home run, stands to watch how far the ball goes for 8 seconds (not lying), all while someone in the stands plays some sort of trumpet.

4:53 - This mark shows a clip of Yoenis hitting home run #32 of the year which also ties the Cuban single season home run record. While that is nice, this is America. With all of this hype and a 20 minute Youtube showcase video, I thought he would be tying the Cuban home run record at 86, not 32. Disappointed.

5:36 - Shows the record breaking grand slam that Yoenis hits. How did I know it was record breaking? Because a rather loud "glass shattering" sound effect plays and scares me into choking on my cookie cake. This is followed by the Spanish speaking announcers going on for 30 seconds and I have no clue what they are saying.

6:13 - AIRPLANE SOUND EFFECT!!!! "I've done all I can in Cuba, now I must move on." Apparently this is the transition from baseball player to work out guru. Suddenly, I have no clue what is going on.

6:41 - Now we all get to see Yoenis work out without a shirt on. Classy move. It's a well known fact that baseball players work out better without a shirt on. Also, if I'm not mistaken, that is Chris Brown blaring out of my computer speakers. Final note, whoever is filming this video on the track is either running along with him, riding a bicycle, or is purposely shaking the camera as hard as he/she can. I may get sick.

8:23 - Still rocking the Chris Brown music, we all get to see Yeonis do some leg press. Not only is he leg pressing a lot of weight, he is leg pressing two of his friends who are most certainly "too excited" that they are helping him out. Seriously, look at their faces, that is pure arousal. It also just came up on the screen that he is currently benching 1300 lbs. Not sure if that is true or not, but I'm pretty sure that isn't that much.

10:29 - We get to see Yoenis shagging fly balls in right field. Apparently they don't teach catching the ball with two hands in Cuba.

10:47 - I was going to talk more about his poor fielding skills when the video transitioned into an extremely erotic workout between Yoenis and his workout partner. While this part of the video made me uncomfortable, it got worse when they used slow motion to show off his "CORE POWER!"

11:24 - They are still working out in slow motion. . .

11:27 - Now we see how Yoenis handles the center field position as he shags fly balls once again. More importantly, this clip shows how focused he is on catching fly balls. It doesn't even phase Yoenis when a random four wheeler drives behind him. That is an important skill that will transfer into the MLB. He also catches a ball behind his back. Well done Yoenis. I could do that when I was 9.

12:53 - I didn't update for the last minute and a half because I was enamored by how amazing his "CORE STRENGTH" was. At this point the viewer gets another look at some fielding practice that Yoenis is taking with the kids from the Cuban movie El Sandlote.

15:39 - DOING WHATEVER IT TAKES TO BE THE BEST!!!!!!!! AIRPLANE SOUND EFFECTS!!!!!! I am totally thrown by the fact that his little airplane graphic lands in ?, USA. What does this even mean? Does he not know the cities that certain teams play in? Would he really play for the Astros if they signed him?

16:22 - Now a map of the United States with each of the MLB teams logos on their respective cities. The ? logo is right in the middle but is right about the Twins logo. Is that subliminal messaging by Yoenis? Does he want to play for the twins? Has he ever seen snow?

16:38 - Here comes a slow scrolling stat sheet on various aspects of his career. Mind you, we have had complete silence in this video for the last two minutes or so. Not sure if this is done on purpose or not. Either way, it is making me want to see him leg press more and more weight! It also just scrolled through 3 paragraphs of text. No human can read that fast.

18:02 - A "Thank you" message is being posted on the screen. Strange because there are still over 2 minutes remaining in the video. Also, still in complete radio silence.

18:22 - Some words just flashed on the screen for a mili-second as a strange woman softball player is shown. I like the applause sound effects. We now find out that it is his mom. Strange children are cheering.

18:48 - Did he really just thank Ahman Green? Is this where Green went after his days with the Texans? Also, right after the "Thank you" went away, why was there a cow mooing sound effect?

18:55 - Yoenis also has a nice thank you tribute to his family and friends at this point. It shows three of his "friends" dancing to some sweet music while being shirtless and bad at dancing. This goes on for more than 30 seconds.

19:27 - No more thank yous, but just in case any of the MLB teams were wondering, yes, Yoenis can cook a pig.

19:58 - I almost thought that the pig part was an accident and wasn't meant to be apart of the showcase video, however, then Yoenis tells everyone The End with a red letter H and a pink letter N. Extremely confused.

If this video took me over an hour to watch and critique, how long did MLB execs take to watch the video. I am still currently sitting in silence because I am not sure what to do next. I do know though, that I need to work on my abs, pig cooking, and behind the back fly ball catching. After I have mastered all of the above, I will be ready to sign with the Twins.

FINAL NOTE: I am in shock right now and cannot proof read. This is raw, uncut, work out watching emotion right here. If you care that much, you shouldn't be reading it anyways.

2011 Free Agent Predictions

2011-11-11T10:55:00.007-06:00

Yes I know, I am a little late to the party, but it's not my fault that the prediction emails were still coming in as of Wednesday. Not to mention, some of them weren't even filled all of the way out (Mr. Anonymous). If you go back and look at the predictions from StartWedman's 2011 Free Agent prediction piece, the results were not good. Somehow, Mr. Anonymous won with only 5 correct free agent picks. Terrible. However, this is the year that we all come out on top and correctly predict each and every free agent. Or at least the most important ones to us.

1. Albert Pujols - Three out of the four writers that contributed to the predictions think that Prince Albert will be staying at home with the St. Louis Cardinals. Only Peck, who will now start out 0 for 1, believes that he will land with the Yankees.

2. Prince Fielder - Now this one is a little more split up. We all threw out different teams in a hope that one of us nails the correct option. However, you can be sure that Fielder will end up playing for the Rangers, Angels, Giants, or Nationals by the end of the off-season.

3. Michael Cuddyer - Two votes for the Twins, one for the Red Sox, and one for the Royals puts Cuddyer in the category of "who really cares?".

4. Craig Counsell - While he may be approaching the ripe age of 50, Counsell is still an integral part of any playoff baseball team. He provides a sub .200 batting average with below average. . .well below average power. Still, he will be taking his talents to the Brewers (2 votes), Royals, or Cardinals.

5. Jose Reyes - Even with the latest reports that he may be signing with the Marlins, here at StartWedman, we know all. Even though Mr. Anonymous refused to vote for this one, the majority of the writers believe that he will end up signing with the Red Sox, while I think the Giants will pay for his talents.

6. Jimmy Rollins - Phillies for all four votes. We are probably going to be wrong on that one.

7. Nick Punto - He was an interesting variety of choices from the StartWedman staff. Realistically, he will sign with either the Giants or Cardinals. However, other options included playing for the Italian national team or passing away this off-season.

8. Omar Vizquel - Between retirement, becoming a player/coach for the Marlins, or signing with the Indians or Giants, young Omar Vizquel seems to have an amazing break out season planned for 2012. On a side note, where does he find such tight baseball pants?

9. Josh Willingham - A power bat with a decent average is always a hot commodity on the free agent market. The Cubs, White Sox, Nationals, and Brewers are all contending for his services.

10. Coco Crisp - Whether it is stealing 50+ bases or providing you with a delicious breakfast, Coco should find a new home pretty quickly. Cooly believes the White Sox will swap out weak hitting lefty speed (Pierre) for weak hitting lefty speed when they sign Crisp. Other votes were for Indians (2) and the Royals.

11. Grady Sizemore - Since the Red Sox just met with Grady, and I chose Grady to go to the Red Sox, I am pretty sure that I am, and always will be, correct. Mets, Rays, and Athletics also received votes.

12. Carlos Beltran - Giants, Tigers, Red Sox, or Rangers. He may have just rally killed this article.

13. Brandon Webb - There isn't much buzz right now on the status of this former Cy Young winner's destination. Mr. Anonymous refused to vote, Cooly thinks he will be playing slow pitch softball with Eric Byrnes, while Peck and I think he could land with the Braves or Nationals.

14. Roy Oswalt - I think most people forget what a dominant pitcher he was with the Astros. Derailed by injury last year, 2012 will be the chance for him to get back on track. Whether it is with the Yankees (2), Astros, or Rockies, Oswalt is still good. Also, please check out the link on his name. Awesome.

15. Yu Darvish - Besides all of the amazing Asian promo videos he is bringing to the United States, Darvish will also bring a solid season for one lucky team. Peck still thinks he will end up back in Japan, but the Blue Jays, Yankees, and Cubs are all favored to win his talents. The logo on his jersey though does look like the new Miami Marlins style. . .

16. Bruce Chen - Or should we call him. . .MVP of the universe. Dominant master of the world. Bruce Chen defines what all is man. However, that didn't mean that Mr. Anonymous would vote for him. The other three writers did though and think he will end up pitching for the Red Sox, Yankees, or Royals in 2012.

Random picks will land Aramis Ramirez with the Newark Bears or the Pirates. So there you have it. While it isn't a complete list of the 2011 MLB Free Agents, it is the only one that matters. If you don't like it, you can get out.

To Bunt or Not to Bunt: The Great Debate

2011-10-20T11:20:00.002-05:00

There has been an on-going debate over the past few years between writers here at StartWedman over the effectiveness of the sacrifice bunt. While I am firmly on one side of the fence, I will try to remain objective in my focus and analysis of the sacrifice bunt as a great and beneficial move for any club ever in the history of the game. Get it?

While I am almost positive that I stand alone on the pro-bunting side, we all do have to agree that whether they should bunt or not is extremely relative to the situation, who is batting, who comes up next, and what time of the year games are being played. While we are currently having a bunting argument over the World Series game last night, if this game was played in April, we would be idiots for caring.

For the sake of an even playing field, lets all assume that there is a runner on first with no outs when explaining/defending any of out points.

My pro-bunting argument mostly lands on the fact that runners are more likely to score if they are on second base rather than first. Regardless of the batter's batting average or power, it is easier to hit a single than a double, triple, or homerun. Just ask Craig Counsell.

I also tend to believe that there are most "good" possible outcomes when bunting the runner over than the "bad" outcomes of letting the batter swing away. For example, there are really only two "bad" outcomes of the sacrifice bunt. 1) You are handing the other team a free out (which I do not deny) and 2) you are taking the bat out 1 or more of your batters' hands. However, there are more "good" outcomes of the sacrifice bunt. 1) You move the runner into scoring position, 2) a speedy batter could potentially beat out a throw, or 3) the fielder commits an error.

So if you bunt, there are multiple chances for it to be a successful or unsuccessful move. No argument there. But I still believe that it is still a better option than letting someone swing away. With a runner on first and no outs, a few "good" outcomes can happen. Either the batter can get on base (ie. hit, walk, error etc.) or the batter can subsequently move the runner over in some other form. But remember, baseball is a game where some of the best players tend to fail 70% of the time. A fly ball and the runner stays on first with one out instead of standing on second. A ground ball and you either end up with a runner on first with one out or a double play. A strike out leaves you in the same boat.

Obviously, you aren't going to have Albert Pujols or Prince Fielder lay down a bunt, but putting a runner in scoring position for players of that caliber increases the likelihood of scoring a run. In the case of Elvis Andrus and the at bat that caused this, Andrus laid down a bunt and moved Ian Kinsler over into scoring position for arguably the best two hitters on the Rangers. While it did not pan out, it gave them the best chance to take the lead. The inning would have taken on a different feel had Andrus grounded into a double play.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

2011-10-17T20:01:00.000-05:00

Never thought this would be happening in mid-August.

Cards in five.

Extreme Hate Edition: Gerardo Parra

2011-10-17T10:53:00.003-05:00

I have never tried to hide my true feelings for Gerardo Parra. Just look at him. He looks like someone from a JR Tolkien series that stole a Dbacks jersey and somehow made his way onto the field. Not to mention, since I am your resident Diamondbacks expert, and #1 fan, I will tell you who you can and cannot hate in Arizona.

While my feelings about Gerardo are nothing new, I found myself at an all-time low when I tried to theorize that maybe Juan Pierre would be a better option for the Diamondbacks left field situation. However, let's not forget, Juan Pierre is never a better option. . .than anyone. . .ever. I actually tried to argue with people on the comment section of the Arizona Diamondbacks beat writer's blog about justifying Pierre over Parra. That is when I knew. . . I had just hit a new level of hatred for a baseball player. Did I really just say that I wanted a slap hitting left fielder that can't throw the ball farther than my sister? Do I really want someone who doesn't know how to properly size their clothing or own a mirror or wear their hat correctly?

Maybe it is my resentment against the Diamondbacks for letting Conor Jackson go after his losing battle with Valley Fever. Maybe it's the fact that Adam Dunn never panned out. Maybe I still feel that hate for whoever plays LF ever since Eric Byrnes left the Dbacks to go play softball in Seattle. Couple that with the fact that Parra hasn't done anything offensively in Arizona in his first three years, you get a deep down loathing for someone I have never met.

Ever since arriving in Arizona three years ago, Parra has managed to hit 16 home runs. While that may seem awesome to the average fan, please remember that he is hitting in Phoenix. Chase Field ranks second in the league in altitude and the Diamondbacks have been ranked top five in home runs the past few years. Any one of the writers here at StartWedman, aside from Cooly, could hit more than 16 home runs at Chase Field in a given year, let alone three years combined. His .292 batting average is extremely deceiving as well. It might look nice, but A) he chokes in pressure situations, B) he batted 8th most of the season in front of the pitcher, and C) he looks like a gremlin.

My main argument against these bloggers was how bad Parra's defense was this year. While they all argued that he has a cannon of an arm (and I will agree with that), I wasn't sure if they watched the games I watched all year. With my MLB.tv package, I was easily able to see more than 60 Diamondbacks games this year and during each one, I ended up tweeting to most of the Dbacks personnel trying to get rid of Parra. He has 13 errors over his first three seasons which by itself, is not very good. For comparison sake, Nate McLouth has 13 errors in his 7 year career. What this stat doesn't take into account are the mental errors. At least once a week there was a Diamondbacks highlight of Parra running in circles looking for the ball in the air. Multiple times did he dive for a ball that was well out of reach. TERRIBLE, AWFUL, defense from someone that everyone seems to love but me.

The worst part about it is that fact that he is only 24 years old and there is no end in site. The Diamondbacks top LF prospect is still 2+ years away from the majors and the Dbacks brass seems to love him. Maybe it's because he is marketable to the surrounding community, but it is not for his baseball ability. So please, give me anyone else. . .even Juan Pierre. I can't go through another season with Gizmo for a left fielder.

Coming Soon: Ronny Cedeno

2011 Start Wedman MVP Voting

2011-10-06T13:42:00.000-05:00

Time to show our support for the democratic system around here again and decide who ultimately deserves the MVP. Since our opinions are just as dumb as those of the typical BBWAA member, I like to think that last year's winners, Jose Bautista and Joey Votto, were more honored to receive our first inaugural MVP award. And once again, shenanigans are about to be had.

The process remains the same as last year with the writers of this great site contributing their votes and Fangraphs offering a WAR buffer vote to counteract any Steve Bartman-esque nominations. The only difference is that there were only four voters instead of five this year. First place votes will be in parentheses next to the player.

We pride ourselves in being gentlemen through and through here at Start Wedman, so we will allow the oldest (and worst) of the two leagues to go first. And the 2011 Start Wedman NL MVP award goes to...

1	Matt Kemp (4)	47
2	Ryan Braun (1)	43
3	Justin Upton	27
4	Roy Halladay	25
5	Albert Pujols	19
6	Joey Votto	17
7	Jose Reyes	15
8	Clayton Kershaw	12
9	Lance Berkman	12
10	Troy Tulowitzki	8
11	Bruce Chen	8
12	Cameron Maybin	6
13	Dan Uggla	5
14	Cliff Lee	5
15	Prince Fielder	5
16	Starlin Castro	5
17	Emilio Bonifacio	3
18	Logan Morrison	3
19	Brandon Phillips	2
20	Michael Morse	2
21	Nyjer Morgan	2
22	Shane Victorino	1
23	Rick Ankiel	1
24	Michael Bourn	1
25	Andrew McCutchen	1

After leading the Dodgers to a season one game above break-even, Matt Kemp has taken the award with his off the charts season. I was the only one who slotted Braun above Kemp, mainly because I believe that his season mattered more since he was on a playoff team not cleaning up against the scrubs of the NL West. Plus, I don't see Kemp as the type of person who would be able to endure this sort of joking around. And that's what I ultimately want in an MVP candidate - a bro with a sense of humor.

Although the biggest item to note is that Bruce Chen received 8 points despite never donning an NL uniform this year. But I allowed the vote to stand, unlike Fangraphs. Democracy rules!

Let's see how Chen fairs in the AL MVP vote. Could he take home the award?

1	Jose Bautista (2)	40
2	Jacoby Ellsbury (1)	39
3	Miguel Cabrera	34
4	Justin Verlander (1)	28
5	Curtis Granderson	25
6	Dustin Pedroia	18
7	Ian Kinsler	16
8	Bruce Chen	11
9	Josh Hamilton (1)	10
10	Michael Young	10
11	CC Sabathia	7
12	Melky Cabrera	7
13	Ben Zobrist	5
14	Adam Jones	5
15	Adrian Gonzalez	5
16	Brandon Allen	4
17	Paul Konerko	4
18	Adam Dunn	3
19	Alex Gordon	2
20	Coco Crisp	1
22	James Shields	1

Well, fiddlesticks. Sorry, Bruce Chen; so close though with your 8th place finish. Instead, Jose Bautista takes home his second straight Start Wedman AL MVP award by another single point, over Jacoby Ellsbury this time.

And once again, the AL voting has been lampooned by our quality writers. First, Josh Hamilton received one single first place vote, which amounted to his only vote; I hope something similar happens in the real MVP voting sometime. Despite all the hype, Start Wedman clearly does not support Justin Verlander's bid to Eckersley the awards this year. Brandon Allen is flattered. Alex Gordon's vote is actually not a joke vote; he was tenth in WAR this year in the American League. And finally, Adam Dunn probably did have the greatest impact of any one player on his team's season, so he receives his deserving points.

Congratulations once again to Jose Bautista as well as newcomer to the MVP posse, Matt Kemp. I would love to get you two awards and send them your way, but this blog kind of fails to create revenues for itself.

Better luck next year, Bruce Chen!

Pointless Analysis, Part 2 of likely 4

2011-10-03T16:17:00.000-05:00

Now that the season has fully wrapped up, the time has come to apply some more Pointless Analysis. Luckily, this time, I will refrain from jinxing any remaining teams, sorry Braves and Red Sox.

Today's session is a nice and easy appetizer for the more intense waste of time I will bother with in the next two posts. Two quick comparisons of my previous, early season predictions to the finalized standings, in order of final win/loss record find their way to the menu today. The two main reasons for this are to one, figure out well my process predicting the final standings, and two, add to the pointlessness of this entire endeavor since baseball's unbalanced schedule makes a one through thirty ranking of the teams' records fairly pointless.

When I ultimately compared the final standings to my original predictions, here are the five biggest winners and losers based on the number of rankings spots they jumped or fell, respectively:

WINNERS
1. Arizona Diamondbacks +21
2. Milwaukee Brewers +17
3. Detroit Tigers +14
4. Cleveland Indians +12
5. Toronto Blue Jays +9

LOSERS
1. Minnesota Twins -19
T2. Colorado Rockies -17
T2. Chicago White Sox -17
T4. San Diego Padres -14
T4. Baltimore Orioles -14

In addition, the "worst player" process correctly predicted the final standings of three teams (Astros, Angels, and Rays). When looking at the losers are winners, for the most part, the most surprising teams (Diamondbacks, Indians, Blue Jays) and biggest disappointments (Twins, Rockies, White Sox) overall based on anyone's initial predictions all make an appearance. So the "worst player" ranking system was unable to identify those unexpected results. The system also proves that no matter his best efforts, Mark Kotsay was unable to hold back the Brewers this year.

For the second course, I decided to take the ultimate WAR rankings of my "worst players" and compare those to the final rankings as well, just to check and see if the players I chose held some sort of magic theory that could predict the final win/loss standings. Much to my surprise, that also failed.

Here are the biggest winners and losers using that method of comparison:

WINNERS
1. Tampa Bay Rays (Dan Johnson, funny enough) +23
2. St. Louis Cardinals (Miguel Batista) +21
3. Philadelphia Phillies (Pete Orr) +20
4. Arizona Diamondbacks (Melvin Mora) +18
5. Detroit Tigers (Carlos Guillen) +17

LOSERS
1. Houston Astros (Carlos Lee) -29
2. Baltimore Orioles (Derrek Lee) -23
3. Minnesota Twins (Jim Thome) -20
4. New York Mets (Chris Capuano) -17
T5. Colorado Rockies (Jason Giambi) -15
T5. Oakland Athletics (David DeJesus) -15

One team came out spot on with no difference at all, the Atlanta Braves with Brooks Conrad. Again, there is a slight, but unsurprising trend. The good teams with terrible years from their "worst players" jumped into the winners category while bad teams with (relatively) great years from their "worst players" fell into the losers category. I am also constantly amazed at how Carlos Lee and the Astros keep screwing everything up since Lee posted a 3.2 WAR, which actually was the highest on the dead last Astros team. I think that if it wasn't for him and his terrible team, things would be far more stabilized.

Hopefully these two quick bits of analysis wet your pallet for the rest of the Pointless Analysis that will follow in the next week or so. Stay tuned.

Pointless Analysis, Part 1 of ?

2011-09-22T14:41:00.000-05:00

Remember those pre-season rankings I concocted back in April in order to figure out my best guess for the eventual World Series winner this year? No? Well, then maybe you should click that link?

So you probably didn't click the link, knowing the overall lack of motivation around here. Here's a quick rundown of how five months ago, I chose the Chicago White Sox (yeah... my bad) to win it all. I went through the highly specialized and scientific process of picking each team's "worst player," and proceeded to rank each MLB team by its "worst player" in order to arrive at the conclusion that the most useful "worst player" would result in the season's eventual champion. Like I said, highly scientific.

Well, now the time to analyze the results of those picks has come because there is nothing better than spending valuable time on a pointless task. This is why I apply all of my free time and energy evaluating minor leaguers for fantasy baseball instead of making money off the stock market. Although, given today's returns from the markets, I may be better off with the hauls from my fantasy winnings.

The season isn't quite over yet, but my ultimate picks weren't too terrible compared to what what actually happened. Two of the picks (Phillies and Rangers) are going to cakewalk into the playoffs (watch the Rangers collapse now, sorry Texas). Two (Red Sox and Braves) are on the verge of making it in; although, I personally think the Braves are likely to choke. My other four picks (White Sox, Rockies, Rays, and Reds) will be playing golf in October for a myriad of reasons ranging from injuries to Adam Dunn. Honestly, that's not too shabby, considering no one outside of Phoenix (apart from a lonely soul in Valparaiso, Indiana) could have seen the Diamondbacks being competitive this year.

But I want to dig a little deeper, mainly to burn some free time, and look more closely at the original "worst players" I picked did and whether they actually had any bearing on the ultimate standings at the end of the season. Like I have titled the post, pointless analysis. And this is just part one, I have more up my sleeve for when the season ultimately finishes. But unlike those smarty pants statisticians at Fangraphs who do multi-part posts, I'm pretty sure the final results won't end in me being right, and I promise I won't chalk things going wrong up to luck (that would please Buster Olney tremendously).

A couple quick facts about the "worst players" I picked at the season's start. The highest WAR put up was 3.0, the lowest was -0.9. Three players never saw any Major League playing time (Kendall, Newhan, and Robertson). Seven players played for more than one team, three of them were traded (Diaz, McDonald, and Thome), while the other four were cut/waived and re-signed with another team (Batista, Bush, Helms, and Wood).

I know that I didn't originally rank the teams in my picks since I basically pooled teams together, but I will ultimately from here on out use the list in order as my rankings. So, I predicted the White Sox to have the best record and the Astros to have the worst, in other words (thanks for helping me out, Houston). This will be another cog that makes everything even more (un)scientific.

The first thing I want to look at is what the ultimate standings would have been with those players I picked. Based on the logic of this scientific process, the team that got the most WAR out of its "worst player" should have done the best on the season. I know the season isn't finished, so WAR isn't a complete stat, but it shouldn't change much over the next week, especially since most of these players spend a majority of their days riding the pine. Also, for players who split their season between two teams, I have only used the WAR they produced when on their original teams, to get that split, I used Baseball Reference WAR, which can be a little more (or less, if the player sucked) generous, instead of Fangraphs.

Here are the rankings of "worst players" 2011 WAR:

1	Carlos Lee	HOU	3.0
2	Chris Capuano	NYM	1.8
3	Miguel Cairo	CIN	1.8
4	Derrek Lee	BAL	1.5
5	David DeJesus	OAK	1.4
6	Jason Giambi	COL	1.3
7	John McDonald	TOR	0.9
8	Aaron Miles	LAD	0.9
9	Jim Thome	MIN	0.9
10	Brooks Conrad	ATL	0.7
11	Jason Varitek	BOS	0.5
12	Luis Ayala	NYY	0.4
13	Mark Kotsay	MIL	0.2
14	Will Ohman	CHW	0.1
15	Nate Robertson	SEA	0.0
16	Jason Kendall	KCR	0.0
17	Guillermo Mota	SFG	0.0
18	David Newhan	SDP	0.0
19	Dave Bush	TEX	0.0
20	Brandon Wood	LAA	(0.1)
21	Pete Orr	PHI	(0.1)
22	Carlos Guillen	DET	(0.2)
23	Adam Everett	CLE	(0.4)
24	Melvin Mora	ARI	(0.5)
25	John Grabow	CHC	(0.5)
26	Matt Stairs	WSN	(0.6)
27	Matt Diaz	PIT	(0.7)
28	Wes Helms	FLA	(0.7)
29	Miguel Batista	STL	(0.8)
30	Dan Johnson	TBR	(0.9)

So based on this theory with the "worst players" I originally chose, the Houston Astros would have had the best record because El Caballo came out of nowhere this year.

Another fun comparison, here are the biggest "winners" and "losers" compared to my original rankings of the teams based on how many spots they moved up or down, respectively.

WINNERS:
1. Houston Astros +29 (Yes, that's a worst to first.)
2. New York Mets +20
3. Toronto Blue Jays +16
4. Seattle Mariners +14
5. Oakland Athletics +10

LOSERS:
1. Tampa Bay Rays -23
T2. Philadelphia Phillies -16
T2. Texas Rangers -16
T4. St. Louis Cardinals -13
T4. Chicago White Sox -13

Essentially, the teams I picked to do well and received crappy performances lost while the teams picked to by shitty and received good performances lost, pretty obvious. One team, the San Francisco Giants, had overall zero movement as I picked them to be 17th and Guillermo Mota was 17th in WAR of this collection of "worst players."

So that was a lot of wasted words on some pointless analysis, but what have you come to expect around here? Look forward to the season's end, when more of these posts will be on their way...

2011 YSSW Midseason Awards

2011-07-11T22:37:00.000-05:00

It's that time of summer again. Those three days of misery when baseball fans across the world are forced to watch the ever-annoying Home Run Derby (I miss the good ole synthetic days) that proceeds the All Star game that includes a quarter of the MLB population.

Thankfully, just before the final round of the Derby, I have enough blood left to type before the brain aneurysm Chris Berman and Nomar caused takes my life. Although, this is the first year that Boomer hasn't induced the internal bleeding. That honor belongs to the 15-year-old, polo shirt wearing, possibly mentally handicapped Sam Fuld that joined pre-Derby show.

But enough of re-hashing of the shitshow we were forced to sit through tonight (or flipping between watching Michael Jordan win his sixth championship). It's time to get to the good stuff. The always exciting, annual YSSW midseason awards. This year, we have two participants to hand out these highly coveted awards.

Now that Zach has had the chance to see socialism in action during his European vacation, his baseball mind has been skewed. And his picks represent so...

POST-EUROPE ZACH'S PICKS

Since I've barely watched any baseball this year, I'm making all of my selections based on the news stories that have been out about the players and the amount of fantasy yelling these players have produced. On that note, here we go:

NL MVP - Andrew McCutchen. He was an All Star snub (Has he replaced one of the 27 guys who backed out of the ASG yet?), but he has been one of the most valuable players this year. Or so says the Fangraphs WAR numbers.
AL MVP - (Tie) Josh Hamilton and Derek Jeter. Derek Jeter recently hit his 3,000th hit, which surely means he is worthy of an All Star Selection/MVP/Lifetime Achievement Award/Oscar/High Times Man of the Year Award. Josh Hamilton just killed someone. Which means he is creeping up on Ugueth Urbina in the PK (People Killed) category.
AL Cy Young - Justin Verlander. My first pick was going to be Old Hoss Radbourn, but I decided against it.
NL Cy Young - Is Bronson Arroyo still good? No, crap. I guess I'll go Roy Halladay.
NL ROY - Danny Espinosa. he's killing it for my fantasy team!
AL ROY - Eric Hosmer. He's good right?
Worst Player AL - Juan Pierre. Not even a question on this one
Worst Player NL - Raul Ibanez. A -1.1 WAR is a difficult task. Good work Raul.

POSTSEASON PICKS

AL EAST - Boston
AL WEST - Rangers (The team that kills together, wins together!)
AL CENTRAL - Tampa Bay (I'm giving this one to the Rays because no one in the Central deserves the postseason. If forced to choose I will side with the Tigers though)
AL WILDCARD - Yankees
AL CHAMPS - Red Sox
NL EAST - I really wanted to pick the Mets, to show the same amount of faith in them as I had last year, but I'm going to go Phillies
NL WEST - Giants
NL CENTRAL - Pirates! So what if this won't ever happen, its fun to dream
NL WILDCARD - Braves
NL CHAMPS - Braves
WS CHAMPS - Red Sox

Pretty crazy, but not completely out of his mind quite yet. When Zach picks Messi for AL MVP, we should all start worrying. Between Zach's lack of awareness and my insanity from last year, I am unfortunately going to be rather boring. I blame corporate America for whitewashing me.

COOLY'S PICKS

AL MVP - Curtis Granderson. Last time I checked, I think he's on pace for 175 runs, no joke. Okay, now that I check things, maybe that pace has slowed down. And Joey Bats is only six behind him. Alright, nevermind, I'm changing my vote to Bautista.
NL MVP - Lance Berkman. So shoot me, I came around on him finally.
AL Cy Young - CC Sabathia. It's rare that the dude with the most wins also happens to lead his league in WAR. CC wants his paper this offseason and is making it happen.
NL Cy Young - Doc Halladay. So boring.
AL Rookie of the Year - Michael Pineda
NL Rookie of the Year - Not Anthony Rizzo and his .166 batting average. So Danny Espinosa works out.

POSTSEASON PICKS

AL EAST - Boston Red Sox. Remember when Bill Simmons and Ken Tremendous were freaked out in April? That was hilarious.
AL CENTRAL - Chicago White Sox
AL WEST - Texas Rangers
AL WILD CARD - New York Yankees
CUTE TROPHY FOR PARTICIPATING - Tampa Bay Rays
AL CHAMP - Boston Red Sox
NL EAST - Philadelphia Phillies
NL CENTRAL - St. Louis Cardinals
NL WEST - San Francisco Giants
NL WILD CARD - Atlanta Braves
NL CHAMP - Philadelphia Phillies

Ugh, so boring. I know that a lot of people, mainly Buster Olney, have been making a huge deal about how 22 teams are within ten games of the playoffs right now. But when you look at the standings, are there really any surprises that anyone can see happening? The only races that will play out until the last week are probably both Central divisions. But in the AL, the winner gets a first round crushing from the Red Sox. And in the NL, the Cardinals/Reds was probably a coin flip before the season anyway.

But in the end, there will probably be a ton of teams over .500 that will help support Bud's ridiculous realignment visions. There will be run fixing involved, and I will be sad.

But whatever, here's the boring World Series winner from me - Philadelphia Phillies

And sneaking in last minute to steal my thunder (and giving me a bitch of a time formatting his picks), Mr. Anonymous is taking over...

MR. ANONYMOUS' PICKS

AL MVP - Adrian Gonzalez; 150 RBI on a great team should be enough to win it.
AL Cy Young - Justin Verlander; Another no hitter during the second half and its locked up.
AL Rookie of the Year - Mark Trumbo; Toss up, Trumbo is a sweet name.
AL East - Red Sox; Just like AMPM, too much good stuff.
AL Central - Indians; Asdrubal Cabrera is overachieving, and the rest of the central sucks.
AL West - Rangers; Tight race…
AL Wild Card - Yankees; Like usual the AL East must have two representatives.

NL MVP - Matt Kemp; going to have 30, 30, 100. The only problem is that the Dodgers are bad.
NL Cy Young - Cole Hamels; Could be anyone from the Phillies staff.
NL Rookie of the Year - Darwin Barney; First his numbers are tops amongst rookies, and is gritty.
Second, his name is also sweet.
NL East - Phillies; Too solid of a pitching staff to drop off.
NL Central - Pirates; As a fan of a notorious losing team, you’ve got to have hope!
NL West - Giants; The NL West sucks.
NL Wild Card - Braves; A great combination of youth/experience and pitching/offense, just not enough to beat the Phillies consistently.

POSTSEASON PICKS

ALDS:

Red Sox vs. Indians
Rangers vs. Yankees

ALCS - Red Sox vs. Rangers; Yankees don’t have enough pitching, and the Red Sox have too much of everything.

NLDS:

Phillies vs. Giants
Pirates vs. Braves

NLCS - Phillies vs. Braves; Really wanted to go with the Pirates, but they need another piece or two (unless the trade deadline is good to them). Phillies’ starters are sick.

World Series - Phillies vs. Red Sox; Phillies in 6, a great match-up that would be exciting to see.

And there you have it, two Phillies picks and one Red Sox vote of confidence. Long live annoying sports fans.

Please note that I apologize in advance for the gratuitous errors probably listed within this post. There are not usually my style, but the combination of an evening of "BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK" and recent spurt of Words With Friends has melted all portions of my brain that form letters into words into sentences.

Welcome Back!

2011-06-29T17:16:00.003-05:00

I've been struggling (nay, thought about this a couple of times) with a pretty heavy decision relating to Start Wedman. I had been completely convinced that I was going to be leaving the blog, for greener pastures (there were no greener pastures, this is a lie). Honestly, I haven't posted anything in a few months, and with the rise to glory that Derrick Rose had this year, a hectic work schedule, and being out of the country for awhile I really have not been thinking about baseball all too much.

Since I've gotten back, I've started to pay attention to baseball again. Much to my surprise lots of things are still angering me. Yesterday, I read this (which I believe has been taken down from Grantland because of its terribleness). Juan Pierre continues to start and bat leadoff for the White Sox. Adam Dunn has gotten as many hits the past 2 weeks as I have.

The final straw that compelled me to write again occurred just minutes ago. Wrapping up everything I have going at work, I end up getting home early and flipping on MLB Network. Here are my thoughts in a rough retro active diary:

4:00 Finish up watching Jeopardy! feeling great. "Oh, hey I should turn on MLB Network haven't done that in awhile.

4:02 Great a live look in. So glad I turned this on. I think I've watched about 10 minutes of baseball the past 2 months.

4:03 Shit, Kevin Millar is one of the 2 analysts working. This is bad.

4:05 MLB Network shows a clip of Eric Byrnes screaming at Kevin Millar for calling San Francisco- "San Fran". Mind you, Byrnes is sporting one hell of a case of punchy face. His hair is some form of messy/homeless. He is screaming as if Stephen A. Smith and Jim Rome had a baby that sports a shit eating grin and bad hair. If you appreciate humor, happiness, intelligence, debate, breathing, arguments, laughter, puppies, boobs, baseball, or living everything Byrnes just said offended you.

4:08 Kevin Millar responds to Byrnes' rant by saying, "I'll call it San Fran!!!!! Because I'm not from San Francisco... I'm from the WEST SIDEEEEEEE!!!!!!!" (holds up West Side hand signal). This offends every fiber of my being. I want to vomit this makes me so angry.

4:15 I cannot remember what happened for the next 7 minutes. Rage blackout.

4:20 I have to find something else on. I can't watch this. It hurts me physically.

4:23 Really, the only thing on right now is Melissa and Joey????? I guess I'll go back to MLB Network.

4:32 Kevin Millar starts talking again. I'm forced to switch over to Melissa and Joey.

4:35 Head in hands, wishing I could be back at work.

4:40 Turn back on MLB Network, Kevin Millar is still alive. I begin to hate life.

4:52 I subdue my rage by sending out a few angry tweets that hopefully will lighten my anger.

4:53 I finally realize that this is the exact reason that I have the blog. Without StartWedman I would have had a heart attack at 22. Seriously, this is my outlet for venting on all the things I hate about baseball. If I didn't have this, I would be screaming at coworkers, yelling at them for thinking Juan Pierre is a useful player or that Derek Jeter is one of the Top 5 Greatest Players of all time. This website is my stress ball. If I could not go on swear word laced tirades here, where else would this anger be misplaced? I start writing.

5:32 Chris sends a Picture of Tower Bridge with a title saying "... I miss it." I realize how sweet my Europe trip really was. I look up and see Eric Byrnes on the MLB Network stage. Ugh.

5:43 MLB Network announces they are about to show Kevin Millar interviewing Terry Francona. I opt to turn the TV off.

Uncovering the Truth: Mark Grace

2011-06-09T16:13:00.005-05:00

I have said it all along and no one has believed me. . .Mark Grace is a terrible person. Finally, on June 8th, 2011, people can start to see it as well. Please turn your attention to the picture on the right. . .and yes. . .that is the photo taken by the Scottsdale Police Department.

"Former Arizona Diamondbacks and Chicago Cubs first baseman Mark Grace was arrested in Scottsdale on Memorial Day on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, according to a police report."

Awesome job Mark, way to be a role model for our children. I always assumed that because of the way he announced D'Backs games that he was drunk all of the time, this only proved it. You can read more about it here.

Jay Bruce: Finally

2011-05-24T12:37:00.004-05:00

While I won't be using any of the same stuff, Bleacher Report also did a Jay Bruce piece today that sparked this from me. . . and it's about time.

Doesn't it seem like Jay Bruce is 31 years old and battling for a free agent contract? It feels like I have been talking to Bob about Jay Bruce for the last 10 seasons. I'm pretty sure that for the last 7 or 8 years, everyone in the fantasy baseball world has been saying, "This is his year. This is the year Jay Bruce will finally be good. This is the year of his breakout." But every year he has been in the league, he has let fantasy baseball managers, myself included, down. While 20+ home runs a year is nothing to scoff at, it is not the kind of numbers that people expect when they draft this supposed fantasy baseball monster.

Then every year I pull up his Baseball Reference page and realize that he is only 2 days older than I am. He still has at least 4 more years before his baseball skill set peaks and he hits his full potential. He won't even be a free agent until 2017, so why have I been so set on him becoming this stud of a ball player? Because that's exactly what Jay Bruce is. When the Reds drafted him 12th overall in the 2005 draft out of high school, the beginning of his 2011 season is what they were looking for.

Now on pace for 32+ home runs this years, his lowest full season strike out total, and his highest batting average, Bruce is just starting to hit his stride. It is Jay Bruce, not Joey Votto who leads the team in most offensive categories. Fantasy baseball man crush or not, I'm more excited to finally be right about him. It will be nasty to see what Votto and Bruce can do with the rest of the season and for years to come.

Can The Indians Keep Their Current Pace?

2011-05-24T11:47:00.003-05:00

After defeating Boston at home last night, the Cleveland Indians owned the exact mirror opposite record of the Twins (30-15 versus 15-30) before Minnesota finished its game. There is no doubt that in saying that tidbit there has to be the biggest shocker of the season thus far. However, will Cleveland be able to maintain what is now a 15.5 game lead on the Twins (after their loss) and 7 game over the Tigers for the AL Central division race? Only the numbers can help us tell - mainly because no one watches Indians games.

Enjoy it while it lasts, Cleveland.

In looking at BABIP, the Indians overall haven't been terribly lucky or unlucky. The team's overall BABIP on the offensive side is an even .300, which ranks sixth in the majors now and is slightly lucky, but isn't considered extreme. Plus, when you consider that the team has a relatively higher percentage of groundball and line drive hitters (Choo and Cabrera are the best examples), the BABIP will stay a little on the high side.

However, they have been relatively lucky on the pitching side, where Cleveland currently sports a .269 BABIP, good for fourth in the majors. Not to mention that the Indians currently have the third lowest HR per FB rate in the majors - something which can be chalked up partially to the fact that the average temperature in Northwest Ohio so far this year has probably been about 27 degrees. Overall, the Indians have the seventh most favorable ERA-FIP in the majors. All of these signs are major indicators that things will swing the other way for them in the near future, especially considering the warmer weather will aid the White Sox power bats and the Twins have been the unluckiest team in the Majors thus far (third worse ERA-FIP at 0.38 and league worse BABIP at .266).

But with the head start Cleveland has opened up for itself, the club can maintain its lead if they are willing to make a few tweaks and add pieces; otherwise, they will likely meet the same fate as last year's Padres, who didn't make the right additions and wound up finding themselves outside the playoffs when their luck ran out. Here's what the Indians can do:

1. Fix Shin-Soo Choo.
Although Shin-Soo has apparently been playing hungover all season, that does not seem to be his biggest problem. When looking at his numbers, they suggest that something is wrong with his swing. He has always been Ichiro-like in that he puts up crazy BABIP numbers (career .349) because of his line drive swing and great bat control. His current .296 BABIP does not come close to his normal rates. Plus, he is putting up the lowest isolated power number of his career (.140 this year versus career mid-.180's). Meanwhile, his line drive percentage is down while his fly ball percentage is up. All of these figures suggest something is wrong with his swing as opposed to luck pushing him to his worst season so far. If they can figure out what's wrong with Choo's swing can get him back to normal, they will be able to add a little more offensive firepower to help counteract when Asdrubal Cabrera cools off and the pitching luck evens out.

2. Acquire A Power Bat
Somehow, this squad has been able to manage its way through the season without much of a power presence in the line-up (unless you count Cabrera's explosion). Hafner and Sizemore, the usual source for power, have been doing their normal love affair with the disabled list. Plus, their numbers suggest a lot of luck that can't be counted on if/when they return (Hafner sports a .415 BABIP figure, while Sizmore has put up an unsustainable .359 ISO aided by a 19.4 HR/FB%). The trade deadline should prove to be pretty thin this year, but I think they should gamble on a veteran with a relatively cheap deal on a non-contender. Do they pursue Hideki Matsui, Vladimir Guerrero, or Jim Thome if they don't fully trust Hafner's health? I think even approaching the Astros and helping take Carlos Lee off their hands wouldn't be a terrible idea; although he is certainly less affordable. Something will definitely have to be done to bolster the line-up, and I think these routes make sense.

3. Acquire A Starting Pitcher
Yes, the Indians will need a pitcher too if they don't want to collapse. The rotation they have patched together so far is not going to continue its current pace. Josh Tomlin is second in the league with a -1.83 ERA-FIP, suggesting that the out-of-nowhere ace is in need for some serious correction as the summer carries on. Fausto Carmona and Chris Perez, number one starter and closer, respectively, are some of the most wildly unreliable pitchers currently around. But just like with the bats, there will be few to no high impact pitchers on the block come late July. If I'm the Indians, I make a serious run at Francisco Liriano. I think the Twins have had enough of his inconsistency and are probably going to let him walk in arbitration this winter anyway. If they can get a few prospects for him, I'm sure they would be happy. Those prospects would have to be mighty good though since trading a quality arm to a division rival will take some heavy convincing.

4. Get Rid Of Chief Wahoo
Seriously, is there any more racist logo in sports today (and it used to be so much worse)? The red face, the grinning buck teeth, the blatant disregard for Native American culture. The Washington Redskins may have the most racist name, but Chief Wahoo takes the cake in terms of logos. How the hell is he still around?

2011 Rays = 2006 Cardinals?

2011-05-23T14:35:00.000-05:00

There is nothing in the world cooler than a math equation headline that takes about four seconds to dream up. I'm sure that your interest is piqued and now you can't wait to continue on. Or maybe you are completely offended by the fact that I have just compared one of this year's best contenders with what is widely regarded as the worst World Series winning team of all time (although, they still won it all, suckers!).

My original inspiration for this happened last Wednesday afternoon when I noticed that Joe Maddon turned in a line-up card for a game against the Blue Jays thusly:

1. Sam Fuld, LF
2. Ben Zobrist, 2B
3. Johnny Damon, DH
4. Evan Longoria, 3B
5. Matt Joyce, RF
6. B.J. Upton, CF
7. Casey Kotchman, 1B
8. Elliot Johnson, SS
9. John Jaso, C

A line-up that rivals some of those put forth by the late 90's Devil Rays, who were battling the woes of being a new expansion team formed with the rejects of others. There is only one hitter (Longoria) there that strikes any fear into opposing pitchers. In fact, one could argue whether or not five of them, more than half, (Fuld, Joyce, Kotchman, Johnson, and Jaso) even deserve spots on a Major League roster.

Maddon has been putting this heap of crap on the baseball field all season long and somehow managed a 26-21 record, good for a tie with the Yankees atop the AL East. Yes, there has been a very large degree of luck in putting together that record (a .410 BABIP from Matt Joyce is a good starter), but can this roster pull off the impossible and topple the Yankees/Sox and rest of the American League this year? I think so.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but if the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals were able to pull of what they did, I think this Rays team can too because they are built similarly. Essentially, you take one crafty manager (La Russa/Maddon), give him one slugger (Pujols/Longoria), a solid rotation, and about fourteen utility men that alternate hot streaks. And boom, winning team is assembled.

Let's also not forget that the tiny Sam Fuld, currently leading off with his .278 OBP, is likely to be replaced with Desmond Jennings within the next few weeks as the Rays avoid Super Two status for their number one prospect. Although, his addition may push the Rays out of the cellar of association with the '06 Cardinals, since he's a slight upgrade over So Taguchi.

It's a formula that can surprisingly work in the AL East this year. Much to Zach's chagrin, a scrappy and grindy (and internet meme knowledgeable) team is what will work best in the long haul against the Yankees and Red Sox.

The Yankees have no pitching staff and have reverted to using gimmicky space age operations to fix the pudgy Bartolo Colon (although, that is unlikely to last, as Dave Cameron points out). Their lack of bullpen will catch up to them in the long run and postseason especially, when each pitcher is used to get one specific out. The average age of the Red Sox is 42, I think. They will probably win the division with the likes of Crawford and Gonzalez to carry them through the season, but in the postseason, the pitching matchups will not work in their favor like prior years and anyone outside of Crawford/Gonzalez will be likely worn down and unreliable. A team like the Rays that keeps battling late into ballgames and the season will wear out these two powerhouses, and eventually overtake them in the playoffs.

Although the Rays are currently on pace for a 90 win season, I think that might be enough to pull out the wild card in the American League, where no one seems to want to distinguish themselves. Outside of the Cleveland Indians (wait, what?), everyone looks to be sporting a 500-ish ballclub. The matchups against the Red Sox and Yankees down the stretch will allow the Rays to keep even with those teams, and it's hard to see any of the other teams (Tigers, White Sox, Rangers) considered to be contenders at this point being able to hit 90 wins with the fatal flaws they have.

And if this Rays teams squeaks into the playoffs, they will do damage with a playoff-tested rotation outside of Hellickson. One has to assume that a solid veteran reliever will be scourged around the deadline, and then they will be set. If anything has been proven since the Cardinals 2006 run (and actually the entire decade since the Angels 2002 victory really), it is that solid, smart baseball playoffs will overcome raw talent every time. This isn't the 1990's, where teams can rely on the likes of roided out Chuck Knoblauchs to blast through the playoffs.

That's why my money is still on the Rays to come out of the American League in October, despite their current roster shortcomings.

Beat the Streak

2011-05-19T13:28:00.005-05:00

Everyone has their list of websites that they go to on a daily basis. Email, ESPN, MLB Trade Rumors, Fantasy Baseball, Twitter, Facebook, etc. One of mine is MLB Beat the Streak, I suggest you add it to your routine. You will not get anything out of it, except being insanely frustrated. I may be becoming a masochist like ZTP because I do not make it easy on myself either (not that it would help) I have strict rules that I follow because alternating between Ichiro, Pedroia, and Castro takes the excitement out of it. Now the rules I live by:

1. Never pick the same player twice in one week
It is too easy and mindless to pick Tulowitzki against the Pirates and Padres at home. Challenge yourself.
2. Never pick a player from the White Sox or Cardinals
They both suck and have bad players (I hate myself every time I really want to pick Pujols and can’t).
3. Only choose the pick of the day if you thought of it first
See the response to #1.
4. Limit yourself to the stats displayed on the site only and personal knowledge of the pitcher/hitter
When you already spend way too much time on fantasy baseball during the day over analyzing everything and coming up with stupid trades you have to set limits. Unless you are unemployed, then go for it.
5. Get angry
How does Vlad go 0-4 against Jason Vargas? Why shouldn’t Granderson get at least one hit off R.A. Dickey? He has allowed 64 hits this year and opponents are hitting .311, and Curtis is hitting .300 off him, not to mention carrying the Yankees right now. How do you not play B.J. Upton against the Orioles’ Jeremy Guthrie in Tampa Bay?

So is how it goes for MLB Beat the Streak. A true love/hate relationship. I think I have learned what fatherly pride is like from it too because you don’t know how happy I was when Denard Span got a hit off of Wade Davis. After writing those out I realized I sound like Vince Vaughn from Wedding Crashers with these but who cares. Rule #76 No excuses. Play like a champion!

Also just like Josh Hartnett there is no way you are going to make it, be happy with a streak of 15.

Third Base: The "Hurtz" Corner

2011-05-03T09:24:00.005-05:00

I'm not sure if it is something in the water or a different breed of player, but by my count there have been 9 third basemen hurt already this year. While I am not a doctor, I do have a knack for being right most of the time. So I will take a look at all of these injuries and try to determine if/how they could have been avoided.

Evan Longoria (Oblique): It's hard to knock a guy who came out young, took a team friendly contract, and continued to put up all-star numbers. However, it's not hard to knock a guy with a mullet. In my expert opinion, if you strain your oblique, you are an idiot. He obviously didn't stretch enough pregame or was having a pillow fight with Brandon Inge. You swing a baseball bat for a living. Shouldn't your oblique be in great shape?

David Freese (Hand): Tough break for a young up and coming kid. Tough break for Cooly as he traded for Freese minutes after it happened. "It didn't feel good, it didn't sound good," Freese said after the game. Well no sh!t. You opened yourself into the pitch and left your hand on the bat instead of taking it on the shoulder. Thanks for ruining my NL team.

Nick Punto (Hernia/Hamstring): After having off season surgery for an abdominal tear, Punto decided to go balls out the other day hurt his hamstring. Good thing everyone I know hates him. Good thing he sucks.

Pablo Sandoval (Wrist): Early spring training reports talked about how the Kung Fu Panda worked out for 11 hours a day in the off-season. I wonder how many push-ups he did each day? Doing push-ups and weighing 300+ pounds can wear down and weaken your wrists. Nice job Pablo, you got in shape but suck again.

Donnie Murphy (Wrist): Who is this? I don't care about players who are hitting .103. He doesn't deserve a picture.

Scott Rolen (Shoulder): When you have been playing baseball for 16 years, the shoulder is bound to go out. But 16 baseball years for Rolen are like cat years, you have to multiply them by 4 to get the real number. Rolen is old and it is showing. The Reds may consider putting him down.

Melvin Mora (Old): He was in a car accident during spring training, has 34 kids, and may be older than Julio Franco. He had a foot injury throughout most of April which I can only attribute to osteoporosis (spelled it right the first time). *See Rolen/Reds for solution to the Mora problem.

Ryan Zimmerman (Rectus Muscle): Is this muscle really in the stomach? Doesn't sound like it. His story kind of mirrors Longoria's. Great player, took less money, tears his rectus. . . Not sure how you stretch out a rectus, not even going to try on this one. Kids, avoid tearing your rectus.

Chipper Jones (It's coming): This is the year that Chipper implodes on the field. It may not have happened yet, but mark my words, this is it.

Early (Because Pre Has Passed) Season Preview

2011-04-09T14:21:00.001-05:00

Pre-season previews are a dime a dozen, and no one truly enjoys the straight "these teams will their divisions and here are the awards winners" type of stuff. They're boring, full of careless guesses, and can be done by a grandma pointing at teams in a newspaper. Seriously, they are boring as shit.

That's why I admired what ESPN the Magazine did this year, in approaching the preview from a different prospective. Instead of the traditional rankings based on roster strengths and new acquisitions, they decided to look at the balance of each team's schedule between home and away, overall difficulty based on last year's winning percentages, and length of toughest road trip. For coming from such a crummy magazine, it was refreshing, and surprisingly, when they lined up everything, the projections were fairly savvy - unlike SI, who think that the Cardinals will finish 4th in their division.

Taking ESPN's approach, I tried to hatch up a scheme of ranking teams myself this week. When I began thinking about it, the player who actually impacts the roster the most is definitely not the superstar who puts up a 8 or 9 WAR, but rather the last guy on the roster. These last men off the bench define the team by saying how truly crappy it is as well as what kind of culture they are trying to establish.

Plus, everyone knows in playoff time, that the random dude of the bench is what always wins the World Series (see Jim Leyritz, Matt Stairs, Scott Spiezio, and Cody Ross).

So I have gone through the teams, and placed them into tiers based on the worst guy on their roster. It wasn't the most scientific, but if a team had more than one player that was super shitty and caused me to have a tough time deciding who was worse, that team was eliminated from contention and wound up in one of the bottom tiers. A team cannot be giving two roster spots to guys who should barely even have one, in theory. Another factor that eliminates a team from contention is if it has its worst player playing a major role on the team. That player should definitely not be in the starting batting lineup on a daily basis, nor should a pitcher have a major role in the bullpen or even starting. The last strike against a team/player is if an old, unusable veteran is taking time away from youngsters that could be developing.

When everything shakes out, the results actually aren't half bad. As you will see, the playoff teams I generate are not insanely questionable. There are surprises, however. But hell, let's just look at what happens:

BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

Houston Astros - Carlos Lee
Not only did I have a difficult time picking someone on this roster (only Hunter Pence and Wandy Rodriguez deserve major roles on any other team, everyone else would be role players), but their worst player is, in fact, their highest paid player and clean-up hitter. No bueno. This entire team, and especially Carlos Lee, needs to be taken out into the field and put out of its misery.

Seattle Mariners - Nate Robertson
They are in a similar boat as the Astros, where only a handful of players should even be getting big playing time. The roster is loaded with shitty players, but I had to pick Robertson for his goggles.

Cleveland Indians - Adam Everett
Mark Shapiro went on a bender of buying up washed up infielders this offseason, and Everett is the cream of the crap.

Arizona Diamondbacks - Melvin Mora
Any time a team is giving decent time to a rotting corpse, it will end up here.

Kansas City Royals - Jason Kendall
Although Kendall is on the DL now, you know that Ned Yost is dumb enough to make him his starting catcher when he comes back.

AT LEAST WE WILL MIGHT BE ABLE TO SELL A FEW TICKETS

Pittsburgh Pirates - Matt Diaz
I have discussed with plenty of people how Diaz makes no sense on this roster. Garret Jones is about 80 bajillion times better than him. Diaz, on the other hand, has never ever been good or shown an ounce of talent.

Washington Nationals - Matt Stairs
Although I previously praised him, there is no reason for the Nationals to have Stairs. As an upcoming and coming team, this roster spot needs to be used on a either a youngster or a veteran who is actually capable of helping the team and not eating all of their chicken wings.

Toronto Blue Jays - John McDonald
McDonald falls into the same category as Diaz but is receiving less overall playing time, thank god. He is a no talent ass clown that has stuck around because he shows up on Web Gems every two weeks. Ooo.. so impressive.

New York Mets - Chris Capuano
Best example of the worst player being counted on too much as the Mets are going to use him as a fifth starter. Capuano should not even be starting in a slow pitch softball league since that pitching might be too strenuous on his glass arm.

Florida Marlins - Wes Helms
Helms is not actually a bad worse player to have. In fact, he may be perfect for it with his ability to pinch hit and play a few different positions. However, the Marlins bullpen is filled with the most random collection of crap I have seen in some time.

THE SURPRISINGLY BAD

This is the last tier where I had trouble distinguishing who the worst player would be, and thus, based on this highly scientific process, eliminate them from title contention. This middle ground is where we start seeing a few surprises.

Milwaukee Brewers - Mark Kotsay
Any time you can acquire a guy who was a starting-ish DH with an OPS of .683 the previous year, you have to do it, right? (Although I suspect the presence of Kotsay's wife at the ballpark had a part in the deal) Pair him with the worst bullpen in baseball (after seeing Axford this first week, I have a gut feeling last year was a bit of a fluke), and you have the potential for this great offense to get wasted.

Detroit Tigers - Carlos Guillen
Maybe this isn't so surprising, but some have been picking this team to compete in the AL Central. Not so when Guillen competes with Mora and Kendall as the deadest person in the majors.

Los Angeles Dodgers - Aaron Miles
This roster is truly horrendous. And why are teams still handing Aaron Miles contracts? He needs to be coaching T-ball instead.

San Francisco Giants - Guillermo Mota
Here's big surprise number one since lots of people have them winning it all again. I'm just not so sure how they are going to do it, and this process eliminated them easily. Mota throws beach balls out of the 'pen along with a few others. Barry Zito, who was in strong contention for the worst player title, is yet again sitting in the team's fifth starter slot. And I have questions about the outfield - Huff is actually playing there? Is Andres Torres a one year wonder? Pat Burrell? The backups? Too many problems for a team that has to play every game with a target on their back. Thankfully for them, they get a lot of time to pad their record with games against the Dbacks, Padres, and Dodgers.

Oakland Athletics - David DeJesus
Not terribly surprising that this team was caught in this category, but some will surprised with my pick. I have never liked DeJesus, he floundered forever in Kansas City without showing much and probably will continue to do so forever. I just don't see why teams keep giving him a starting role.

St. Louis Cardinals - Miguel Batista
The Cardinals are terrible this year. The infield outside of Pujols is a joke (Nick Punto will save us!). No Wainwright. The bullpen will be a sore spot all year (Ryan Franklin has run out of luck, if you ask me). And Lance Berkman will be shooting for the all-time worst UZR in RF all year long. On top of that, we have Miguel Batista, the only pitcher to ever be unwanted by every team in the entire world. Heavy drinking for me will ensue this November when Albert dons a new hat because we didn't feel like paying him. Fuck...

THE SURPRISINGLY GOOD

Everyone from here on out is in contention based on my asinine system as I could only point to one player being the "worst," which is good. The quality of that "worst" player will determine the ranking from here on out.

Chicago Cubs - John Grabow
Outside of Grabow, this is actually a pretty solid roster. I don't know if I am saying that because living in Lakeview has brainwashed me or because I am so down on the Cards this year. But the line-up isn't too shabby. For the NL Central, the rotation is solid. And Quade will do some good things for this team. I honestly would not be surprised if they gave the Reds a run for their money this year.

Baltimore Orioles - Derrek Lee
It really is too bad that this team plays in the AL East right now. They would win the AL West and contend in the AL Central. The pitching staff is reaching Rays levels of crazy good and young, and the line-up doesn't have too many easy outs. If only they didn't have to start Lee...

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim - Brandon Wood
I know that Brandon Wood probably isn't that bad, but it's the same story as David DeJesus, only worse. He has not shown anything that will make him useful in the majors. And unfortunately, the Angels are well past the timeframe of trading him away. He will be left to rot away on their bench forever.

San Diego Padres - David Newhan
Newhan is a solid last guy off the bench - veteran presence who will not demand any playing time because he knows how much he sucks. This team will surprise plenty with their scrappiness and ability to grind out games. What would you expect from a team from white-as-shit, rich, David-Eckstein-loving San Diego?

JUST ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE PLAYOFFS

Minnesota Twins - Jim Thome
I know that I just totally fucked the entire system because Thome is easily the best "worst" player (That sentence right there proves that this entire thing has melted the intelligence out of my brain.) But the rotation and bullpen except for Capps/Nathan is just not good enough to push them past the White Sox this year.

New York Yankees - Luis Ayala
Luis Ayala defines what is wrong with this team this year - the pitching staff and bullpen (man, I have been really huge on bullpens sucking this year, did like every good reliever leave the game, or were all of them that roided up a few years ago?). The line-up will smash all year long, but the entire rotation after CC is a question mark this year, which is no bueno.

THE PLAYOFF TEAMS

Atlanta Braves - Brooks Conrad
Can someone say "pity roster spot?"

Tampa Bay Rays - Dan Johnson
Until around 4 pm as of yesterday afternoon, Manny was slotted to be in this spot. Unfortunately, I don't get to spend a few dozen words talking about him now, damn. However, his retirement means that the inevitable move of Zobrist to first and start Desmond Jennings full-time will happen soon. (They have to call up Jennings to take Ramirez's roster spot - right?) That's bad for other teams because Maddon was shooting himself in his new specks by trying out that whole Joyce/Johnson platoon thing.

Cincinnati Reds - Miguel Cairo
Seriously, he is the absolutely perfect last guy off the bench. He's made an entire career out of it.

Philadelphia Phillies - Pete Orr
The second coming of Miguel Cairo.

Colorado Rockies - Jason Giambi
I think this team is going to slaughter the NL. With everyone looking at the Giants, they will sneak up on people, and before its all said and done, being sitting pretty with 95ish wins at the end of the year. They will have good ole Jason Giambi to thank for that. Then they will probably choke against the Braves in the first round of the playoffs. They will probably have Jason Giambi to thank for that, too.

Texas Rangers - Dave Bush
A worst player that's a spot starter/long reliever with a hilarious last name? Win win win.

Boston Red Sox - Jason Varitek
The age of this roster is bound to catch up with them again, like it did last year. Seriously Theo, you are counting on Mike Cameron and JD Drew... again? Didn't learn the first time around? But the additions of Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford will be too much for other teams to keep them down.

That's right, that means...

Chicago White Sox - Will Ohman
When your worst player is a lefty specialist out of the 'pen that knows he sucks and shouldn't be used, so he won't be used - good things are bound to happen. Please tell me a weakness in this line-up that you are going to attack. Let's also not forget that the staff and bullpen are strong, and the minors are quite stocked. I think Kenny Williams built himself a juggernaut without others looking and is just sitting in his pimp chair snickering. They are my pick based on this ridiculous system to win it all.

Manny I have Two Words for Ya

2011-04-08T16:20:00.005-05:00

Do you hear that? Is that a little life coming back into our blog? No, that was me giving the DX crotch chop a billion times when I heard Manny Ramirez decided to retire rather than face the music for his steroid use. There isn't much validity to this blog post, other than to A) put something up here rather than the post that killed off YSW for a month and B) to further point out how much Manny sucks.

Still, what are the odds that he would get tested again? How was he supposed to know that he would get caught. . .again. Other than the obvious * that will go next to his power numbers, you do have to give him some credit for a career .312 BA. You also have to give him a little credit for getting away with steroid abuse for over 19 years and netting himself $204,807,769. Whether it was his antics, his 555* career home runs, or his ability to score incredibly lucrative contracts, we can finally know him for his steroid use. Wait, we already knew that, never mind. Either way, Manny decided to cry and leave baseball instead of face the consequences of his actions. Priceless.

This is just one final act of Manny being Manny and I love it.

My AL and NL MVP are.......

2011-02-27T22:13:00.004-06:00

I decided to submit my name into the MLB Dreamjob contest that Bob posted, and it asks you to do an essay for either AL/NL MVP or biggest story line of the year. Well I did the MVP essay and this is what I wrote.......feel free to bash and disagree as much as possible

AL/NL MVP

The 2011 National League MVP is going to be Joey Votto. Votto won the MVP award in 2010 and he will continue to tear up NL pitching, especially playing in the NL Central. I am a firm believer of players entering their prime around the age of 27 give or take a year, and Votto is right around that time frame as well.

Joey put up career numbers last year in nearly every category and will continue to become more productive. I like the protection that Votto will get in the line-up as well. He doesn't have that star power hitting behind him like he could have on other teams, but he has hitters that put the ball in play and can make you second guess trying to pitch around Votto. Just having the reigning MVP award will also give him an immediate leg up if he puts up traditional Votto numbers.

Playing on a winning team also gives a player a better chance at winning the MVP. The Reds have a great staff and will play in division that features a team that just lost their ace, a Brewers team that continues not to live up to expectations, and a Cubs team that continues to break the hearts of many around the nation. I won't even talk about the Pirates or Astros here. The Reds are a clear favorite to win the Central with Wainwright going down which only helps Votto's case over perennial MVP candidate and contract seeking Albert Pujols.

The AL MVP is a little tougher to predict, but I like Adrian Gonzalez. He is going to get a ton of protection in the Red Sox line-up, but very friendly right field dimensions at Fenway will also help inflate his numbers.

Gonzo put up good numbers after playing in a not so friendly Petco Park, so moving to Fenway and a better Red Sox team is going to help out his MVP case for 2011. I look for Adrian to hit 30 homers and knock in around 110 guys this year. Playing on a team that will compete in the AL East all year helps as well. He's going to be in the spot light all year moving from the West Coast to the East Coast.

Moving to the East coast he will get more national attention between different papers and national media. ESPN loves to favor the Red Sox and cover them extensively throughout the year. Gonzalez will easily put up the numbers to be considered a legit MVP candidate, and playing on a winning team that is highly recognizable will help propel him to the 2011 AL MVP.

The Life and Times of Stump Wiedman

2011-02-21T11:46:00.004-06:00

In an effort to make our site look respectable by actually posting (since we are not going to gain respectability with the content and journalistic integrity of our posts), I'm bringing you lucky few readers another post! Considering February is the Cooly of months (February is to short as Cooly's Penis Size is to short), 3 posts out of me is astounding. Anyways, while I was over at Fangraphs this weekend I stumbled upon their Worst Hitter Ever article, which is a fantastic read. In a throw away line, the author of the post mentions the name Stump Wiedman. Seeing that our website is called Start Wedman, and these 2 names are quite similar, I thought I should be the person in charge of revitalizing Stump's career, Old Hoss Radbourn style. What you will find below is a list of factual and completely made up information on Stump. My only resources here are Fangraphs, Wikipedia, and the lack of creativity that my mind displays.

George Edward "Stump" Wiedman played major league baseball from 1880-1888, giving most of his service time to the Detroit Wolverines. He was the Brooks Kieshchnick of his time, splitting his time as a pitcher and as an outfielder. While his prowess at the plate left much to be desired (I only heard of him because he was mentioned in an article titled The Worst Hitter in Baseball History), he preformed admirably on the mound compiling a 101-156 career record.

Stump Wiedman's career was not always peaches and gravy, in his freshman season with the Buffalo Bison Stump went on to post an 0-9 record in a whopping 13 starts. Historians say that Stump pitched so poorly due to a lack of confidence and that the overall grind of playing outfield and pitching was too much for the Grandfather of Grind. However, they are overlooking one important fact. Stump was drunk off his ass for most of that year. See Stump was devastated over the loss of his one true love, Clara Barton. Earlier that year that swarthy bitch Clara up and started the Red Cross leaving Stump to create his own pleasure. Not being much of a switch hitter, and having little to no control over his left arm meant Stump's only pleasure came from old righty. His arm was simply overworked from the stress.

Have no fear chillens, Stump came back with a surge to lead the National League with a 1.80 ERA in 1881. Thanks in large part to the polio vaccine he got earlier in the year, another sign that anal injections lead to better baseball performance.

Wiedman struggled plenty with his control over the next few years, never gaining the success of his 1881 campaign. Then again, who else could have pitched so gloriously with a height of 0'0". Eddie Gaedel can kiss Stump's ass! Stump was really a thing of beauty at the plate, collecting a record 2 home runs and 112 RBI's in his 9 short seasons. Surely we can never forget the mammoth that was Stump Wiedman, and his remarkable -6.7 career WAR.

Russell Branyan 101: A Poor Man's Mark Reynolds

2011-02-17T09:56:00.004-06:00

You know, I really am excited about the upcoming MLB season. While the Diamondbacks won't contend for a title, there is a small sense of hope within that caused me to already buy the 2011 MLB.tv package. While it stung that they traded away one of the most exciting and scrappy Diamondbacks this off-season in Mark Reynolds, I understood the move since Kevin Towers was wanting to cut down on the strikeouts. I understood and even bought into the concept until I saw this headline yesterday:

D'Backs sign first baseman Russell Branyan

As a fan of baseball and fantasy baseball team manager, Russell Branyan is always a sleeper. Even though he is an injury risk, he has the potential to put up 30 home runs. Not to mention, in the extremely hitter friendly Arizona ballpark, he could have a big rebound year. Branyan also provides a veteran, father-like presence to a still relatively young ball club.

As a fan of the Diamondbacks, I'm really not OK with this baseball move. Not only did they sign a 35 year old, injury prone first baseman, they take the bat out of Brandon-I-will-never-play-in-the-big-leagues-Allen's hands completely and are now thinking about trading him. This also goes away from exactly what Towers was trying to establish. He wanted less strike-outs, so he trades away Mark Reynolds and lets Adam LaRoche walk. However, if you compare Reynolds with Branyan and look at strikeout rates, Reynolds struck out in 33.6% of his career plate appearances with Branyan coming in at a close 33.1%.

While I understand that they would be paying Reynolds a lot more to produce eerily similar numbers, they wouldn't be taking the bat out of a top prospect's hands. Kevin Towers, you suck. Please stop tweaking this team and go trade for Michael Young already. Also, I wouldn't mind cutting half of the pitching staff and signing someone from Japan. Fun fact, the Diamondbacks are 1 of 3 clubs left in the majors to never employ a Japanese baseball player. Can you guess the other 2?

FJM: Something About Athletes Destroying Robots

2011-02-16T11:52:00.004-06:00

Consider this a 2 day posting streak which can only equal the Cavs 1 game winning streak for major accomplishments of 2011. I actually wanted to do this post a few days ago, and since it has been picked up and bashed by several better outlets, but since I am not a real journalist and have very little integrity, here we goooooo:

Telander: Brain against the machines

Is there any chance that this article could be good? None, OK, well let's rip it apart.

Blows to the head are nothing new in sport, or life.

That little 'or life' is the first sign that Rick Telander should be committed.

I am reminded of the time I asked Mike Tyson at a news conference before a fight if he was concerned about the possible negative effects from some of the blows to the head he had received in his career.

You are reminded of this how? By the topic that you formulated and chose to write about? Or, was there a tiny green man perched on your shoulder waxing melodically about the rise of the machines?

He looked at me as if I were insane, giggled and said, ‘‘I think some of the blows to the head I’ve received have been good for me.’’

Einstein likely felt that way. Edison, for sure. Moses, too.

Einstein. Edison. Moses? Other candidates Telander was thinking of using: Boyle, Joule, Fran Drescher. Hawking, Hubble, L. Ron Hubbard. Ford, Gates, Chris Kattan.

But theirs were blows of enlightenment, ‘‘Eureka!’’ flashes of perspective and creativity dropped on them by God or the electric company.

Little known fact, electric companies existed before electricity.

Physical punches or whacks that rock the jelly-like human brain inside its skull casing cause no enhancement other than bruising, bleeding and temporary or possibly permanent damage down the road.

Why is this formula so important now...

The main reason you want to avoid getting hit in the head so many times is to avoid the future embarrassment that comes with writing an article comparable to what Telander is about to give us.

...particularly as it relates to popular sports like tackle football?

Two reasons.

First, only recently have scientists and journalists been able to put together the research and information that show conclusively the dangers of single or repeated blows, even minor ones, to the heads of athletes in training and competition. Before, it was mostly anecdote, low humor, obfuscation.

Wait, this sounds almost logical.

Just wait...

Consider it wasn’t until last year that the devious and know-nothing NFL Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee was restructured with seemingly authentic and un-buyable neurologists at the helm, and the word ‘‘Mild’’ was dropped altogether.

Mild. Brain injury. Ha.

I am reminded here of ‘‘minor’’ surgery, which, of course, is surgery on somebody else.

Could there be a less direct way of saying the NFL didn't give a shit about concussions before this year?

We’d better change . . . or else

Once the new knowledge gets out there, it is wrong to continue on with certain rituals, even joyous ones, that we previously thought were morally fine. At least we shouldn’t continue them in the same way as before.

What? Is this in the same article as your first few paragraphs, or was there some sort of editing mistake that meshed your column with someone from the Tempo section?

You can ask me here why hockey fighting goes on, and I’ll say I have no idea. We banned bare-knuckle fighting decades ago, but . . . I surrender.

Second, we live in a world that is progressing into a vast arena in which mankind has never lived, never even comprehended, the stadium of human-enhanced computer dominance.

BOOM Goes the Dynamite! There you have it. The thesis to Telander's article a mere 13 paragraphs into the piece.

It is a place where intelligence, real or artificial, will be all. Scientists say that by as early as 2045 there may well be a computer that dwarfs mankind. By then, according to the current cover story in Time, a computer might exist that will surpass ‘‘the brainpower equivalent to that of all human brains combined.’’

Don't be fooled, this entire piece is just a mask. The only reason for this entire article is so Telander can let the reader know he read TIME Magazine. Now he can lord it over all his peasant followers heads. Hoity toity prick!

That’s smart. Unless we’re really dumb.

Well, we know that you are really dumb.

And we’re not,

If by we you mean everyone in the world except for you, I could see your point.

except when we do dumb things, like let our heads get damaged continually and call it something like ringing a bell.

Or write mindless drivel and call it a Sun Times column. "Call it something like ringing a bell" is one of the worst lines I have ever read. Rick Telander, you are not funny.

In our new environment, how can anyone allow his or her IQ, or their children’s, to be lowered?

In our old environment on the planet Xiquo the goal was to lower your IQ as much as possible then ring as many bells as possible, all while murdering as many strippers as time would allow. Alas, here on Earth we must use our combined brain power to team up and battle the rising of the MACHINES.

A new way of thinking

Physical labor is already disappearing in developed countries. Robots can do that.

This line cracks me up.

And the impoverished.

That is not even close to a complete sentence. It is also mystifying to think that a career journalist is writing this.

Physical labor is already disappearing in developed countries. Robots can do that. And the impoverished. Sports are for fun at low levels. Then they’re about something else — entertainment, escapism, wealth, voyeurism even.

That was the entire paragraph. Sports are about entertainment and voyerism, and somehow wealth, but robots are taking over for poor people in the work force. DOES ANYONE UNDERSTAND WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE????

If you think the talk of silicon joining and even replacing the organic mind is nonsense, remember that your own laptop does the work a global library once did.

Telander must have had this on his mind for a long time. This is the only logical explanation for the writing of his article. That or he is super freaked out that Watson just beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy!

Consider, as Time points out,

We get it, you read TIME, we don't. You are much better than us. Also, are there any other resources that you used to compile this piece, or was that one story in TIME all you needed to confirm Robots will kill us all one day?

...that ‘‘your average cell phone is about a millionth the size of, a millionth the price of and a thousand times more powerful than’’ the best computer at MIT 40 years ago.

When I think of Muhammad Ali, I always think of a proud, charismatic man who had to surrender his brain to get the attention he craved. And it always makes me sad, even angry.

Weren't we just talking about the rise of computers? Stick to one illogical subject please.

t’s ironic, and perfectly illustrative of our schizoid times, that two movies nominated for Best Picture in this year’s Oscar race are ‘‘The Fighter,’’ and ‘‘The Social Network.’’ In the former, brawler ‘‘Irish’’ Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg, uses his brain cells as pawns as he fights his bloody way to the championship. In the latter, Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg, uses his brain cells to invent the thing called Facebook, which connects 600 million people to one another, no end in sight.

Umpbump often does a version of these FJMings where they go through an article in bullet form. If anyone could tell me where in the fuck this paragraph fits into the rest of this writing I will personally murder the stripper of their choosing.

We’ve seen each journey before — indeed, they’re the same journey, the triumph-over-obstacle journey that humans are hard-wired to love.

Ward/Wahlberg is far more dynamic as a person, a recognizable hero, however. But Zuckerberg/Eisenberg is the one who resonates, who blows your mind — a bland, friendless, blank-faced, hyperactive tech weenie as genius winner. I have never seen anything like his onscreen character before. In olden days he would have been the nerd, lost in the rat lab.

But the olden days are gone. And you can be assured that if the battle between machines and humans ever becomes confrontational, it won’t be won by fists and forearms, helmets and sticks to our delicate heads.

I can't even comment on the rest of this. This escapes so far from anything in the previous paragraphs. I am utterly shocked that an editor let this piece of garbage into their newspaper. Rick Telander, you should be ashamed of yourself.

MLB's Shortstop Deficiency

2011-02-15T11:51:00.004-06:00

While watching MLB Network's Top 10 Right Now programme for the top shortstops in the game, I came to the revelation that there are very few good shortstops in the Majors. I'll give you the list, as I remember it:

10. Starlin Castro
9. Marco Scutaro
8. Stephen Drew
7. Alexei Ramirez
6. Jimmy Rollins
5. Elvis Andrus
4. Jose Reyes
3. Derek Jeter
2. Troy Tulowitski
1. Hanley Ramirez

These are the Top 10 baseball players at arguably the most important defensive position on the field. This is a shit sandwich (with exception to the top 2 players). Let's go through this starting with the guy they said "just missed the list".

Yunie Betancourt and Miguel Tejada. yes, that is right, the players with the best chance to make this list were a has been and a never was. Yunie Betancourt wouldn't start on most AAA teams, how is he one of the best shortstops in the game???? In 2009, he actually compiled a -1.7 WAR. Simply by being on the field, he cost his team 1.7 Wins over a bum they could have called up from AAA. This is incredible.

When I saw Miggy's name on the list, I was shocked. I didn't even think he played shortstop anymore, so I had to look it up. Turns out, he barely does. Tejada had 58 games played at shortstop last year. How is this one of the top shortstops in the game????

10. Starlin Castro. Sure he has a lot of upside (some would say Tremendous Upside Potential). He has had one pretty good year. If I had a draft of all major league players, I would probably take Starlin pretty high solely based on his youth and projecting his growth. But, putting him in the Top 10 of all shortstops as of this moment is jumping the gun a little.

9. Marco Scutaro. Really? Didn't he almost lose his job to a guy named Jed last year? (I imagine this is what everyone named Jed looks like)

8. Stephen Drew. I like Stephen Drew, and i fell in love with him as a fantasy player early on. However, he still hasn't quite blossomed into the player I hoped he would become. Hopefully, it is because he hates playing baseball like his brother does. With all that being said, he is still ranked way too low on this list, wait for the crap sandwich that is coming up.

7. Alexei Ramirex. Had the highest UZR of any shortstop last year and hit 18 homers. I still can't understand why he is so underrated. And then Al Leiter confirmed my worst fears, "The thing that is holding Alexei back from making the jump into the great shortstops list is all the errors he makes" (paraphrased). Really, the errors? Jeter made approximately 6 defensive plays last year, but since he did not make an error, he is a God. Ramirez lead the league in Total Zone, meaning he got to far more balls than Jeter, but still gets no respect.

6. Jimmy Rollins. I thought he was injured. Oh, it's a contract year, then I'll change my mind and pencil Rollins in for a career year.

5. Elvis Andrus. He is a great fielder. Probably the best fielding shortstop in the game. Can't hit for shit. I guess this is about where he should end up on the list, but where would Elvis Andrus been on this list had he played in 2002?

4. Jose Reyes. See Jimmy Rollins.

3. Derek Jeter. True Yankee. -14 errors all year. Bitches want to fuck him. Not even remotely good at playing shortstop.

Again, #1 and #2 are very good players, so I won't get into them. Check out the rest of that list. Put any of these guys in any other decade of baseball and they might not make the Top 10. Sure most decades the SS position consisted of scrappy fielders, but even on that level only 1 or 2 of these guys could compete. Forget about comparing them to the SS in the Steroid Era a juiced up Nomar spits on Stephen Drew. I just wish the most publicized position in baseball would get a little better at, you know, playing baseball.

On a Carzy Train with Chipper Jones

2011-02-11T13:40:00.006-06:00

If you came looking for unbiased opinions and third party objectivity you came to the wrong place. Chipper Jones is gracing the baseball world with his presence for another season with the Atlanta Braves! If you were unaware Chipper is amazing. I have many reasons as to why I think that; some have to do with baseball, some (most) are solely based on a man crush since I was a little guy.

Through the Fence Baseball wrote this gem on my boy "Chipper Jones: Better than Cal Ripken Jr and Derek Jeter?" Home-dog is right on this one and I even like Cal, and respect Jeter. This is a pretty good article, but what really won me over was the excellent use of a spreadsheet. If you read this article good for you, if not I'll sum it up: Chipper is awesome and should get into the Hall of Fame on the first year eligible.

Chipper is clearly coming back because of the sweet farewell tour Bobby Cox had last year, Chipper wants his own this year. Why not? He has earned it. In addition to the stats and crazy things like that he also (if you were waiting for bullet points you are in luck here they come, a Mr. Anonymous staple):

• Has a great walk-up song that in Atlanta personifies greatness is entering the box.
• He has a song written about him.
• He was an influence in me choosing the number 10 when I played baseball.
• He is the second best switch hitter of ALL TIME only to Mickey Mantle.
• Chipper undoubtedly loves the USA
• He was in a TV commercial with Dave Thomas and one with Ludacris.

Thank you Chipper for one more season, as the "Voice of the People," we all thank you.

The Greatest Centerfielder of All Time

2011-02-05T11:21:00.000-06:00

Jim Edmonds has returned to finish his first-ballot Hall of Fame career with the Cardinals. And yes, I am celebrating too much. And yes, I pray that he starts over Berkman. YES.

(Extreme side note - when typing Jim Edmonds into Google, the first result of the instant search after the obvious 'Jim Edmonds' is 'Jim Edmonds gay.' What haters.)

Free Agent Fall Out

2011-02-04T14:05:00.004-06:00

Earlier in the off-season, the Start Wedman staff each predicted where the top free agents would sign. You can find that article here. So while the free agent signing period hasn't ended yet, ours has and here are the results.

Tied for 1st Place: Mr. Anonymous

Mr. Anonymous has the slight edge in the tie breaker (since Zach's random pick could be construed as laziness) and ended up picking 5 of the 16 free agents correctly. Mr. Anonymous' acceptance speech will probably include Derek Jeter, Victor Martinez, Adam Dunn, Rafael Soriano, and Aubrey Huff. It is unfortunate that Bruce Chen signed with the Royals instead of finishing his career with the Nippon Ham Fighters.

Tied for 1st Place: Zach

Zach's hail mary of "Nick Punto will sign with anyone but the White Sox" panned out as Punto inked a deal with the Cardinals. His list also included Jeter, V-Mart, Dunn, and Rafael. I can't see him celebrating this too much. Feels a lot like taking steroids.

Tied for 2nd Place: Cooly

A lot of safe picks for Cooly had him sharing second place with me. Jeter, V-Mart, Konerko, and Huff bring him home four correct predictions. Had the Cesar Salad taken his talents to St. Louis, we would have had a threesome for top dog.

Tied for 2nd Place: Tristan

I was rather upset with myself after the final standings came out. Mostly because I picked the Diamondbacks for four of these free agents and none of them chose Arizona. I would like to post a shout out to Jeter, V-Mart, Konerko, and Carl Pavano for their help in bringing home second place. In your face Garcia. Had Jermaine Dye signed with the Gary Railcats, I would have been singing a different tune.

Last Place: Matty G

Not much to say here. Only three picks correct out of 16. Pavano, Soriano, and Jeter were his lone picks. If Mark Kotsay and Andruw Jones would have resigned with the White Sox, he still would have been tied for last.

Micah Owings: The Man, the Myth, the Legend

2011-01-27T09:56:00.003-06:00

Since no one else is blogging throughout the month of January, you are stuck with me and my constant (and sad) Diamondbacks updates. Which brings me to the most exciting news of the Arizona off-season. . .MICAH OWINGS IS BACK. Quite possibly my favorite pitcher in the big leagues, due to his duel fantasy baseball threat, Kevin Towers is looking to take his game to the next level.

While competing throughout spring training in the bullpen for the long reliever slot, Owings will also play some innings at first base. While the Diamondbacks already have Juan Miranda and I-will-never-play-in-the-big-leagues Brandon Allen, Owings could still get at bats as a pinch hitter, or a late game substitution. This actually looks to be a smart baseball move. You add another pinch hitter to your roster without depleting the bullpen of an arm.

For a little background on Owings, he is still the career high school home-run leader in Georgia with 69. As a sophomore in high school, Owings hit .630 with 21 home-runs. He played college ball at Georgia Tech for two years before transferring to Tulane for his final two. As a senior, he led the Green Wave to a #1 ranking all while hitting 18 home-runs, slugging .733, and posting a 9.61 strikeouts per nine on the mound. Owings then went on to the minor league system and converted to a full time pitcher going 16-2 with a 3.33 era in 2006. Sadly, that success never carried over and he has spent the rest of his time bouncing between levels.

Why would they have him hit you ask? Lets take a look at his major league career stat line as a hitter.

PA: 198
HR: 9
RBI: 34
K: 62
AVG: .293

Going with a rough average of 600 plate appearances for an everyday ballplayer, a full season in the field could see him finish with something like this. . .

PA: 601
HR: 27
RBI: 103
K: 188
AVG: .291

While the strike out numbers are Mark Reynolds-esk, the offensive numbers themselves are staggering. Yes, I know that most of his numbers are hitting out of the 9 hole, and yes I know his numbers dipped in Cincy, but he will be going back to a very hitter friendly Arizona ballpark and there is a chance for him to replicate. He was an extremely good hitter in high school and was still a very good hitter in college, Owings is just a few years out of practice. After trading away Reynolds and letting Adam Laroche go, the Diamondbacks will be searching for someone to hit the ball a long ways. Enter Micah Owings and his journey to become the MLB's first two way player since Brooks Kieschnick was for the Brewers back in 2003.

Lets hope this goes better than the Melvin Mora experiment at third base.

The Text That Made My Pants Vibrate...Twice

2011-01-18T09:21:00.004-06:00

With the Carolina Panthers locking up the first pick in the NFL draft and the Phoenix Suns doing their best to stay under .500, there haven't been many sporting events that I could enjoy this winter. Couple that with Kevin Towers deciding to trade away all of my favorite Diamondbacks, made me crawl into a sporting world hermit mode for most of December. After battling the plague/bird flu for the first part of January, I just realized yesterday that we are less than 2 months from spring training. . .which means one thing. . .

FANTASY BASEBALL.

While I'm still not proud of the irrational choice of Omar Vizquel in the third round last year (note: I did get him for $1 and he provided priceless veteran leadership for the Bed of Love), I did manage to secure Ian Kennedy as my #1 pick in the NL league for $1 as he went along and provided a 2.7 WAR (roughly worth $14 using a $5 per win estimate). I'm a bargain shopper when it comes to fantasy sports. A lot of times it produces an average team of sleepers that never wake up.

But who cares? For 7 months of out of the year I become friends with and a devote follower of my fantasy baseball team. Without fantasy baseball, I never would have gotten text updates on my phone when Drew Stubbs hit a home run and I never would have googled Neil Walker and followed his games on my MLB.TV account. Fantasy baseball allows me kill multiple hours at work during the summer while also looking extremely productive. When people come in and see multiple spreadsheets and numbers they have no clue that I'm really just checking the home/away splits for Ian Desmond.

That's why this is going to be the year that I crack the top. I'm tired of Cooly almost winning both leagues every year, tired of Brew Crew and his terrible trades, and tired of my trades with Mr. Anonymous never paying off. No more Mr. Nice Guy, I'm going for blood this year. So as a fair warning, this is where it starts. Don't bother signing up, you won't win anyways. I'll leave this ego pumping article with a couple of suggestions for the league this year followed by my predictions for year's end.

Suggestion #1: Keeper League

For the love of (religion will not be discussed on this site) make this happen. We have a core group of people who have joined or played almost every year. I need this connection with my player(s) in the off-season as well. I need to get pissed off or cry when Carlos Gonzalez crashes his scooter and breaks his arm.

Suggestion #2:

There are no other suggestions. I just needed a platform to get my keeper league idea out into the open. I will not rest until this happens.

Predictions:

Cooly - Has a strong year for most of the season. Leads by almost 20 points until September rolls along and his team starts to tank. In the end it won't matter and he will win by 10.

Zach - Sits in the middle of the pack for most of the year. Makes a late inning surge just to fizzle out and place 4th.

Mr. Anonymous & Tristan - We end up having much of the same fate. Battle with each other for the right to 7th place only for Dave Matthews to pass us by. I trade him Ronny Cedeno for Louis Castillo and Ronny Cedeno goes on to hit 14 home runs. We end up neck and neck for 9th with both of us tying for last.

Sam Fuld's Thoughts

2011-01-12T12:02:00.003-06:00

Have no fear, we are not dead... yet. I know there hasn't been much posting lately, and there probably won't be for a little while. Cooly just got promoted to Vice Czar of Working Crazy Hours, Tristan contracted bird flu- or some other terrible disease-, and I have been without internet for a few weeks. We will try to post, but this month may be a little sparse.

Anyways, I thought I would bring to light an article the Fangraphs posted about Sam Fuld. (I understand that I am analyzing a written account that Fuld did with another news outlet, I am just to lazy to link with the original story). The most interesting parts of this piece are the 3rd and 4th questions when Fuld gives his thoughts on the Cubs organization.

Keri: Then there’s the church and state idea, when you’re out on the field, that you try to shut [statistical thinking] out. Do you feel it needs to go that way?

Fuld: I think baseball, in a way, the more brain-dead you are on the field, the more success you have. Which is why you see some big old dummies who are Hall of Famers (laughs). That’s the way it goes. There is a time to think on the field, but when you’re in the batter’s box, it’s all reaction. Maybe there’s an opportunity when you’re in the dugout to think on the stats side, but really your job is simple as a player, and ultimately you have to do what your manager expects you to do.

I suppose it depends on who your manager is, and who your front office is. I came up in the Cubs system, and they’re probably not as involved in the statistics side of the game as some other organizations. It still is important to me to get on base, even though (laughs) there were some guys who, all they cared about was my average.

Keri: Were they telling you, “be aggressive, be aggressive, swing, swing, swing?”

Fuld: Yeah, I definitely got a lot of that sort of instruction. It’s frustrating, but it’s reality. You have to please your boss before anybody else. That’s one of the things I’m actually looking forward to in going to the Rays, is maybe a little more advanced thinking when it comes to the numbers of baseball.

This is a huge shot at the entire Cubs organization. Saying that, "they're probably not as involved in the statistics side of the game as some other organizations" and that it was frustrating when all his bosses cared about was his average is damning to the Cubs. He even adds insult to injury and mentions that the Rays will hopefully be more advanced in their thinking of baseball statistics.

This astounds me. I can not believe that a Major League organization will turn its back on numbers and their affect on the game. Hopefully, Fuld does find some luck with the Rays as their 4th outfielder. And, until the Cubs finally see the light on the statistics revolution (that occurred 15 years ago at the Major League level) their ineptitude will continue.

Off In LA LA Land

2010-12-29T15:03:00.001-06:00

I know that I'm not breaking any news by telling you that over the past few seasons, the Dodgers rank among one of the worst run franchises. With the massive, but illogical and sporadic, payroll cutting that has occurred as Frank McCourt prepared for his inevitable little-less-painful-than-Tiger payout for his divorce, I have surprised no one with my first sentence. That last run-on, however, maybe surprising to some, as you can clearly tell I lost my train of thought a good seven or eight times. Work with me, I'm shaking off some of the writing rust.

I understand the cost cutting initiative McCourt has forced upon his less than genius GM, Ned Colletti. There's certainly nothing wrong with it, it's a part of the business and/or divorces. The problem is that if they are going into a cost cutting mode, don't you think that the Dodgers should be doing a better job of it?

They only have to look down the road (I know it's kind of far because California is unfathomably huge) to see the model of re-building and cost cutting Billy Beane and the Athletics accomplished in Oakland. Now, I realize that things like sabermetrics, numbers, math, and logic may be out of Colletti's range of comprehension, which makes the Athletics model tough for the Dodgers.

That's why they could have seen what the Florida Marlins have done essentially every year in their existence and copied accordingly. There's certainly nothing terribly difficult about trading off the good players and huge contracts a team currently has for a boatload of random young players and hoping something happens, right? I mean, I feel like a chimp throwing darts against a wall could accomplish this task while saving money and fielding a team of (hopefully) humans.

But getting rid of the current, large contracts on a team is not the only part of cost cutting. The team also has to use their money wisely in the offseason and make smart free agent pickups. And it would be hard for one to argue that this is the strategy the Dodgers have taken so far.

Just look at the contracts that the Dodgers, who are supposed to be cutting money, signed this offseason:

Rod Barajas	C	1	year $3.25MM
Juan Castro	SS	1	year Minor
Dana Eveland	SP / RP (Left-Handed)	1	year Minor
Jon Garland	SP	1	year $5.00MM
Jay Gibbons	LF	1	year $0.65MM
Matt Guerrier	RP (Right-Handed)	3	years $12.00MM
Tony Gwynn	CF	1	year $0.68MM
Hiroki Kuroda	SP	1	year $12.00MM
Ted Lilly	SP	3	years $33.00MM
Dioner Navarro	C	1	year $1.00MM
Vicente Padilla	SP	1	year $2.00MM
Juan Uribe	2B	3	years $21.00MM
Eugenio Velez	LF / CF	1	year Minor

On the surface, most of those signings look alright. The Velez/Gwynn/Gibbons/Eveland/Castro signings seem fine since they are simply filling organizational depth. However, they have to spend that money because of terrible decisions in the past that gutted the team's minor league system (ahem, the Carlos Santana throw-in). That undernote makes those signings hurt in the end.

Then you have the idiotic Barajas signing. Please note this point, teams trying to cut payroll/turn the corner: do NOT spend $3.5 million on a pudgy, old catcher who can't stay healthy simply because he played better than your oft-injured but extremely overrated young catcher. Especially since Barajas became completely unnecessary once Navarro signed his contract later.

Now on to the glaring bad spots of the offseason:
1. WHY THE HELL ARE THE DODGERS PAYING $12M FOR HIROKI KURODA NEXT YEAR!?!? When I first learned of this signing in the offseason, I knew that the recession was officially over.
2. Let's hand another $33M to an aging left-hander in Ted Lilly. The left-handed starter pool of free agents was extremely shallow this year, but I think I established that the Dodgers are trying to save money and sudo-rebuild. Handing $33M to Lilly isn't going to help either of those causes. Although I do think that Lilly is a solid starter, a team with clear and realistic intentions of competing next year should have been giving him a contract, not the Dodgers.
3. Matt Guerrier is seriously the worst contract handed out this entire offseason. Hands down, a replacement-level reliever should never ever be given $12 million guaranteed.
4. What's the plan with that Uribe signing? Do they really see him being productive in the last two years of that contract, because I certainly don't. I get the feeling that it was a move to block the Giants from re-signing him. Revenge signings are not an intelligent move for teams that need to learn good roster management skills.

All in all, the signings were not good for the Dodgers this offseason. But they also should have been attempting to dump some of their current payroll. Between Rafael Furcal and Casey Blake, you have to think they would be able to find a suitor for one of the two players. In fact, I bet the Red Sox would love to have both, and they don't give a fuck about money, so they may pick up the tab, too. This is where the Florida Marlins strategy of turning a starter into a handful of minor leaguers could ultimately benefit the Dodgers right now.

After sifting through all of this Dodgers information, I think it is possible for the Dodgers to compete in their rather weak division while also cutting money. If they had the right people running the show, things could get turned around. However, it seems more likely that they are using the McCourt divorce and corresponding cost cutting as a scapegoat for their failures, which are supposedly so crippling that they couldn't have overcome them. But ultimately, the Dodgers will not be competitive in the NL until they realize that there is a lot more overhauling that needs to be done with this team other than cost cutting.

FJM: Strange But Horrible

2010-12-23T19:11:00.006-06:00

I haven't done this for awhile, mainly it takes quite a long time to sift through baseball writings and find complete shit thrown at a page just to meet a quota. While finding a writer horrible views on every sport take complete control of sports. While Jayson Stark isn't the bottom of the barrel over at ESPN, he has a tendency to compile some horseshit, which ESPN always puts on their front page. I'm not going to go through the entire piece, but trust me when I say this, every single section begins with the worst most translucently contrived statement Stark could possibly write. By the third section I'm sharpening my knife for some stripper murdering. who consistently writes complete crap isn't all that difficult, I would much rather spend my time reading articles with thought- on Fangraphs- than mindless space filling dribble. And then there is ESPN. They openly allow people with horrible views on every sport take complete control of sports. While Jayson Stark isn't the bottom of the barrel over at ESPN, he has a tendency to compile some horseshit, which ESPN always puts on their front page. I'm not going to go through the entire piece, but trust me when I say this, every single section begins with the worst most translucently contrived statement Stark could possibly write. By the third section I'm sharpening my knife for some stripper murdering.

Hitting some strange patches in 2010

A Molina brother hit for the cycle. A Pirate got tagged out in the middle of a home run trot. And the same baserunner stole third -- and got caught stealing third -- in the same inning. And if all that could happen in one year, it's just more proof it was another Strange But True kind of season. So what better excuse to look back at the Strangest But Truest Hitting Feats of 2010.

So, you are saying that weird things sometimes happen in baseball???? I am completely flabbergasted by this revelation. Please Jayson tell me more. (Side Note: Is there any better way for parents to ensure that their child ends up as a douche bag than inserting an unnecessary "y" into their child's name? Side Bet: First writer to do this to their child is Mr. Anonymous, whose third child will be named Karyn. Female douche spelling.)

The Very Strangest But Truest Hitting Feat Of The Year

Here is the segment which forced me to FJM this...

Every once in a while, a stat erupts in baseball that's so mind-warping, it feels like it must have been dreamed up by the guys who created "Lost." But there's a reason we crank out these Strange But True columns every darned year. And it's all because stuff like this happens, in real life.

Everything about these three sentences is terrible. Please do not dirty a fantastic program like "Lost" by using it in your shitty column ever again.

So here it comes, a little tidbit we've broken out before. Heck, we confess we've even broken it out before this week. But every time we type it, we still have trouble believing it. So we're rolling it out there one more time.

Preface: the players he compares and expects you to be shocked about will be completely un-shocking you will begin looking for your old timey revolvers.

Please note that JaYson decides to start his first informative sentences with the following words: So, Heck, But, and So. I am not a terrific writer, however, that is a complete shit storm.

It involves our man Ichiro Suzuki.

He got the most hits in the American League last season. No shocker there.

Yet he still, somehow, scored fewer runs than the man who got the fewest hits in the National League (among players who qualified for the batting title).

Ok, maybe that is interesting. I don't know the player in the NL who had the fewest hits, so this could be surprising.

Seriously.

Totally.

It makes no sense, but it's a 100 percent true fact.

I like my facts to 100 percent false facts, but I will concede to your higher education that true facts may be better than false facts.

Ichiro: 74 runs, 214 hits
Mark Reynolds: 79 runs, 99 hits

Is baseball the Strangest But Truest sport ever invented, or what?

Um, no. This isn't strange at all. Ichiro played on a horrible team that scored a historically low amount of runs. Reynolds is the definition of a 3 True Outcomes player (Home Run, Walk or Strike Out) and he hit in the middle of the Diamondbacks order for the most of the year. I would expect him to have a low amount of hits and high amount of runs. That is why Runs are a bad individual stat. Runs are a good team stat, just like RBI's. Theya re a terrible individual stat for this exact reason. None of this screams strange, but thank you for wasting my time and doing it in the absolute least journalistic way possible.

The rest of the article is bad, but here are some things that make you wonder how JaYson Stark got to this level of journalism...

Strangest But Truest Trip Around The Bases Of The Year

On Aug. 11, Astros sprint champ Michael Bourn pulled off a feat we've never heard of. You should try it on your Xbox 360 sometime -- except, of course, that you should be aware there's an excellent possibility it might blow up.

Zingers. I fucking love zingers.

Strangest But Truest Home Delivery Of The Year

We're still not sure how this happened.

I'm still not sure why you are insisting on introducing every "Strange" feat with disingenuous shock.

On Sept. 9, September call-up -- and emergency pinch-runner -- Chris Nelson almost single-handedly won a game for the Rockies in which he never batted and never wore a glove.

By doing something he'd never done before in his life.

Dramatic pause...

By pulling off a straight steal of home.

Dramatic pause...

To score the winning run.

Dramatic pause...

In his team's final at-bat.

Dramatic pause...

For the first stolen base of his career.

Dramatic pause...

Pretty amazing feat. But there's more.

Dramatic pause...

It was Nelson's only steal of the year, in 17 games in the big leagues.

Dramatic pause...

He stole only seven bases in the minors. And five the year before that. And six the year before that.

Wait, we are done with the 1 sentence paragraphs?

And he'd never stolen home anywhere, any time, not even in T-ball.

Zingers.

Oh, and he was the first player in 25 years to steal home in a game in which he never batted or played the field. (Gary Pettis was the last, on June 11, 1985, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.)

So how strange was that? But still as true as it gets.

Remember the last time something shocking happened to you and you were like, "Heck, man, that is as True. As. It. Gets." That is SHIT compared with the truth that was just laid before you.

Strangest But Truest Cyclist Of The Year

Never get tired of mentioning this.

How would you even classify these? Rhetorical comments? Let's just call them Steaming Piles of Stark.

Strangest But Truest Debut Of The Year

It was the most heartwarming Strange But True tale of 2010.

HOW STRANGE BUT TRUE WAS IT??????

In September, the Dodgers called up 33-year-old rookie John Lindsey, after 16 years in the minor leagues. And on Sept. 8, he made his long-awaited big league debut.

By playing in a game he never played in.

True.

No. This must be false. I can not even believe that this is true. This is so wacky... No! So, Strange, that it must be true. HOLY FUCK I get it now, "Strange but True". You've done it again JaYson.

If you want to read a bunch of crap typed one sentence at a time because the brain dead writer does not know what a fucking paragraph is, there are plenty more fragmented sentences for you to enjoy. Oh, please don't forget...

Coming Friday: Strangest But Truest injuries of 2010.

Where the fuck is that revolver?

Since No One Else Will Say It: Trade Fallout

2010-12-21T10:12:00.004-06:00

The Kansas City Royals are finally going to be good (not great). . .in a year or two. With the latest trade, the Royals added young speed, good defense, and two arms that could be thrown into the bullpen (Jeffress) and rotation (Odorizzi) down the road. Lets take a quick look at the young guys involved in the deal.

Alcides Escobar - While everyone is talking about Cain being the centerpiece of the deal, I see Alcides being the best part of the whole thing. His 2009 campaign in the big leagues was what the Brewers were hoping for as he batted .304 in 38 games. 2010 was awful as he hit .235 in 145 games. However, a great article on FanGraphs takes a look at how he can rebound in 2011. Escobar is a young speedy shortstop and should turn into an excellent 1 or 2 hitter for the Royals.

Lorenzo Cain - The same article on FanGraphs talks about the more than probable regression for Cain next year. His BA on line drive hits was higher than the league average, thus those are less likely to fall next year. In his 6 years in the minors he turned into a .300 hitting, 124 base stealing, 28 error committing prospect. Not a bad line, but next year could give us a better story on his ability at the highest level. He also projects as a 1 or 2 hitter for the future Royals.

Jeremy Jeffress - I actually don't know much about Jeffress. Read an article that projected him as a possible set up man for Soria if he can get his control issues corrected. His fastball touches 100 mph but his BB/9 was 5.4 in 10 games last year. He is only 22 and has a lot of time to fix those issues. Look for him to contribute soon for the Royals.

Jake Odorizzi - Spent all of 2010 in single A for the Brewers. Started 20 games and produced a 7-3 record with a 3.43 era. While he is young and is still a few years from the big leagues, 135 strikeouts in 120 innings is impressive.

So what does this all mean? The Royals have one of the deepest and best farm systems. . .EVER. Greinke couldn't wait and in the end I hope it f's him over. Maybe it's because he is mentally unstable and cries a lot that he couldn't take it, but Kansas City is only a few years away from competing in the AL central. They just acquired speedy and defensive players who are close to the major league level, and also have powerful prospects coming up from the minors. For fun, here is a projection of the 2013 Kansas City Royals lineup.

1. Alcides Escobar - SS
2. Lorenzo Cain - CF
3. Mike Moustakas - 3B
4. Billy Butler - DH
5. Eric Hosmer - 1B
6. Alex Gordon - LF
7. Mike Aviles - 2B
8. Wil Myers - C
9. Free Agent - RF*

*2012 Free Agents include Jose Bautista, the rally killer Carlos Beltran, Nick Swisher, the amazing Juan Pierre, and many more.

Moustakas, Hosmer, and Myers are all tearing up their respective levels of minor league ball. Two years might not be long enough for Myers to make it to the majors, but lets be optimistic. Providing all of the prospects pan out, the lineup is a mix of speed and power from various sides of the plate. If they see the talent work out as it should, adding a veteran free agent would be beneficial to such a young lineup.

The Royals rotation will be key in their success. With the departure of Greinke, their 2011 rotation is headlined by names such as Kyle Davies, Sean O'Sullivan, and Vin Mazzaro. . .However, there is some help coming up from the farm system. Danny Duffy is a lefty starter who has posted sub 3 era numbers for the last four years and now sits in AA. Another young arm in AA for the Royals is John Lamb, who went 10-7 with a 2.38 era last year as a 19 year old. A third lefty in the farm system with some promise for the Royals is Michael Montgomery. Blew through single A and A+ ball before coming back down to earth some in AA. All three of these young arms have shown promise and could land themselves a starting job down the road. Who knows, maybe Aaron Crow will get his head out of his ass and start throwing well.

The problem will be developing or signing an ace starter. The one issue with this trade is the damage that it has done to the Kansas City rotation, but there wasn't much of a rotation to begin with. Give the Royals another year of losing before they start to turn things around. They will be one offensive and one big name pitching free agent away from competing once again.

Which NL Rotation is the Best?

2010-12-19T12:04:00.003-06:00

With the Brewers acquisition of Zack Greinke the Brewers now have one hell of a rotation. Their top 3 starters can compete with any rotation in the league in a 5 game series- yes, that includes the Phillies. With all of this movement of National League starters, I think it would be interesting to compare some of the rotations. Since the Phillies have clearly cheated this offseason and now have Cole Hamels and Joe Blanton as their 4-5 starters, I'm only going to compare the Top 3 starters for each team. Let's face it, the Phillies rotation is unmatched when you look at all 5 of their starters.

So let's start out with the favorites:

Philadelphia Phillies

Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Roy Oswalt. Sure an argument could be had that Hamels is better than Oswalt, but Cole's status as a mental midget moves him into the 4 slot in the rotation. They have 3 Cy Young's split between the first 2 starters and all 3 of these guys are Cy Young contenders every year.

Let's get their career stats out of the way, all of these will be respective to Halladay/Lee/Oswalt:

Career Wins: 169/102/150 (about 16 wins a year average for each of them)

IP/162 games: 235/218/221

K/162: 175/168/183

Career ERA: 3.32 (lots of time in the AL East)/3.85/3.18

FIP: 3.42/3.77/3.34

Projected 2011 WAR: 6.8/6.7/4.1

Each of these guys has put up absolutely insane career numbers, we can all agree on that. They are all on the back side of their careers though, which is the big negative against them. Will these guys be producing at the same level 3 years from now? Most likely not. There is sure to be some regression, especially in Oswalt's case, from their career numbers. These guys are also making a ton of money with a committed $253 mil will be made between them after the lives of their current contracts.

After you look past their negatives and just look at what they will do on a baseball field, this front 3 may be one of the best ever. Look at those projected WAR's (all roughly similar to what they produced last year). Other teams in the NL East may just want to start playing for the Wild Card right now. Halladay carving up the opposition with pinpoint control and dazzling pitches, Cliff Lee's utter dominance from the left side, and Oswalt's mix of power and control will make this a tough series every time you face the Phils this year.

San Fransisco Giants

Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Jonathan Sanchez. These 3 showed their ceiling in this year's playoffs. They each beat some of the best pitchers int he game in a heads up matchup. Hell, I think they actually beat every pitcher from the above rotation head to head. Oh, and don't forget they are all young and signed fairly cheaply. Now a look at the numbers:

Career Wins: 56/57/34 (16/11/10 for 162 averages)

IP/162: 225/218/162

K/162: 252/181/170

Career ERA: 3.04/3.45/4.26

FIP: 2.86/ 3.84/ 4.08

Projected 2011 WAR: 6.9/4.6/3.2

Sure their numbers are not what the Phillies' staff boasts, but you can not argue with their production from last postseason. Also, this staff may be the most fun to watch out of any. The electric stuff that each pitcher has is dazzling. They may not be as good as the Phillies but they are almost there. Seeing that each of these guys is under 29, the Phillies may want to watch out in the upcoming years.

Milwaukee Brewers

Zack Greinke, Yovani Gallardo, and Shaun Marcum. A prediction before I even look at the numbers: these guys won't even be on the same planet as the staffs of the Phillies and Giants. However, the jump in numbers from going to the NL from the AL (especially the East) for these starters should not be undervalued. Shaun Marcum pitched exceptionally well against the Yankees, Red Sox and Ray all year last year. How do you think he is going to fare against the Reds, Pirates and Cubs? Greinke has gotten some of the least run support of all time the past 2 years. Now he has Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun hitting for him. The numbers:

Career Wins: 60/36/37 (11/15/12 for averages)

IP/162: 199/184/187

K/162: 167/214/151

Career ERA: 3.82/3.67/3.85

FIP: 3.59/3.51/4.46

Projected WAR: 6.3/4.6/3.6 (Gallardo's was last years WAR numbers)

Actually, my prediction was a little bit off. The only category that the Brewers' staff pales in comparison is in the Innings Pitched. I believe that most of these guys have been limited by youth and their innings purposely limited. Now that they are all getting to the middle of their careers and their peak years, I would expect those numbers to increase. I'm also not sure if the projected WAR's factor in the shift to the NL. Logically, they should, as facing the pitcher slot and a host of inferior talent should provide a boost to one's value. Although WAR may just be based on FIP which already takes those into account. Pardon me for my lack of knowledge on the subject.

Regardless of the WAR debate, surely their numbers will improve from their career numbers. Facing worse competition (Marcum), having better offensive support (Greinke), and not having to face the opposition's #1 (Gallardo) will surely help their Win numbers (I know it is a bad stat, but the influence of those outside forces are the reason it is a bad stat). I may not put them on the Phillies level, but I would definitely be wary of this pitching staff next year.

St. Louis Cardinals

Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, and Jaime Garcia. While Wainwright and Carpenter have had some injury riddled pasts, it should not exclude them from this discussion. These two have proven to be some of the best in the game, when healthy, and deserve to be mentioned on this list.

Career Wins: 66/133/14 (Average: 15/15/14)

IP/162: 198/220/182

K/162: 164/167/142

Career ERA: 2.97/3.80/2.96

FIP: 3.36/3.89/3.74

Projected WAR: 6.6/4.1/3.2 (last year's numbers)

None of these guys are as electric as most of the pitchers listed before, but Carpenter and Wainwright have proven they can do the job and Garcia is an interesting young pitcher. While they, too, are not on par with the Phillies, they should be very interesting to follow. (Side Note: with the addition of Big Puma's mammoth... um... bat, I would expect the Cards to score at least 3 runs more per game than last year. Yeah, that is how good Puma is.)

Overall, none of these teams can match the Phillies, but it looks like the NL is about to face another year of offenses putting up dismal numbers.

Kerry Wood!

2010-12-17T11:57:00.003-06:00

He's back with the Cubs. I'm so happy I won't care if they lose 100 games next year.

Always Sunny and Von Hayes

2010-12-16T21:41:00.003-06:00

I was recently watching the latest episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia when Mac (the second biggest Chase Utley fan I've ever seen-that story is for later) began a tirade about the likes of Mike Schmidt and Von Hayes. Now, we all know who Mike Schmidt is, but I'm here to enlighten you on the career of Von Hayes.

That man knows how to wear eyeblack.

Von Hayes played from 1981 to 1992, coming up with the Cleveland Indians then moving to the Philadelphia Phillies, where he spent the majority of his career patrolling the outfield at The Vet. He had 8 exceptionally productive seasons with the Phillies in which he posted an above average WAR, peaking in 1989 with a 5.1 WAR and an All Star selection. Remarkably, Von was traded to the Phillies in a 6 player deal which netted the Indians a slue of talent including Manny Trillo, George Vukovich, Jay Baller, Jerry Willard, and Julio Franco. (Copied and pasted directly from Wikipedia).

Some interesting facts about Von is that he is the first player ever to hit 2 home runs in the first inning of a game. Hayes was hit by a pitch against Houston hurler Tom Browning. A pitch that would end up breaking his fucking arm and ending the productive portion of his career. A tidbit that I feel compelled to throw in here: well known douche bag Chris Berman's nickname for him was, you would never have guessed this...

Von "Purple" Hayes

I continue to be amazed at how Chris Berman has had a job for so long.

I would be ashamed if I didn't give you any of his stats, so here we go...

Career: 11 seasons, 1,495 G/1,402 H/143 HR/767 R/696 RBI/253 SB/.267 AVG/.354 OBP/.416 SLUG.

I think it is safe to say that Hayes would have been a pretty good top of the order guy. I have never seen him play, and have no idea where he batted in their lineup, but with above average on base numbers and he clearly displayed good speed throughout his career. Actually, analyzing his numbers a little more, his career goes through several quick shifts. Early on he was purely a speed guy, stealing 48 bags in 1984. Then he quickly transitioned to an on base percentage machine in the '85 and '86 seasons, posting .376 and .404 OBP, respectively. Then in the last two years, he displayed power to the tune of 26 HR in 1989 and 17 HR in 1990.

As far as his career is concerned I'm not sure if I would label him as a consistent player his BB%, K%, and SLUG were all quite erratic, but none the less he produced each and every year in a different way.

Well my curiosity was piqued by Always Sunny, and I'm glad I got to take this trip into Christmas Past with Von Hayes.

Upset at the MLB: Rule 5 Draft

2010-12-09T09:36:00.005-06:00

What? You wanted to watch the Rule 5 draft this morning? Too bad.

Are you serious Major League Baseball? You held the Rule 5 draft sometime between when I went to bed last night and when I arrived to work? Why was this not marketed better? When I google searched for a Rule 5 draft picture, I found this. Why couldn't I get tickets to this event off of Ebay? Why wasn't this event on tv? Screw you Bud Selig for not letting those of us in the Rule 5 niche market enjoy this extremely short but sometimes important draft during the winter meetings.

Lets take a quick look back at some of the big names to come out of this event and then go on to produce in the big leagues. Dan Uggla, Bobby Bonilla, Evan Meek, Jose Bautista, Josh Hamilton, Scotty Pods, Johan Santana, Joakim Soria, Fernando Vina, and Shane Victorino just to name a few off.

DAMNIT. While doing some quick research I just found out that Dan Uggla was left off of the Diamondbacks 40 man in 2005 and then picked in the Rule 5 draft by the Marlins. While it sucks, it does explain why I have always wanted to hang out, drink beers, and play softball with Uggla.

So a quick recap of the draft this morning. First look, I don't recognize anyone. But that doesn't matter. Based on name, I am going to predict that Mason Tobin, whom the Cubs took from the Angels and then traded to the Rangers, will be the next big name to come out of the Rule 5 draft. One of the precursors for being good in professional sports is having a sweet name. Mason Tobin sounds like he will hit 40 home runs someday, even if right now he is a relief pitcher.

Cubs Moves Open Thread

2010-12-08T12:28:00.005-06:00

The Cubs stupidly signed Carlos Pena to a huge deal. Let's discuss. Leave your comments below.

Big Puma Open Thread

2010-12-08T12:28:00.004-06:00

The Cards signed Big Puma! I love the signing. Cooly hates it. Let us know what you think.

White Sox Signings Open Thread

2010-12-08T12:26:00.002-06:00

Since we've all been on a huge Twitter binge, I figured we should move this to our blog. Seeing that our other followers are getting angry at us, and we have this blog for a reason.

So leave your comments about the White Sox moves in the Comments Section. Big things going down with the Dunn and Konerko signings.

Choose or Die!

2010-11-30T20:24:00.003-06:00

With the recent irrational moves by the Dodgers sweeping the baseball world, I figured we should compare and contrast the insignificant moves they made today. The moves that I am talking about are the earth shattering choice of signing Juan Uribe to a 3 yr/ $21 mil contract and trading away Ryan Theriot (approximately $3 mil after arbitration).

The question of course is, Should the Dodgers have kept Theriot or gone with Uribe?

Juan Uribe Pros:

1) Swings hard

2) Used to be a good defensive shortstop

3) Hits around 20 HRs a year

4) Can play 2B, SS and 3B

5) Once dove into the bleachers in a World Series (Derek Jeter did that too!!!!!)

6) 2 World Series Rings

7) Throws really hard

8) Looks like Antonio Alfonseca

Juan Uribe Cons:

1) Pretty shitty at most things required for baseball

2) Barely ever gets on base

3) Not good defensively anymore

4) Once dyed his beard orange

5) I've said to myself "No team can win a World Series with Juan Uribe starting for them" TWICE!

6)Will someday swing so hard time will go back 5 seconds

7)Unlike Antonio Alfonseca, only has 5 fingers

8) Is getting paid $7 million more than he should be

Ryan Theriot Pros:

1) Girls think he is pretty

2) Once played shortstop

3) Cooly thinks he is a good fit on the Cards

4) Gets on base a lot

5) Could steal you 20 bases

6) He is from the Bayou

7) The Cubs thought he could hit leadoff

8) Is probably undervalued in his current contract

Ryan Theriot Cons:

1) Has always played shortstop poorly

2) He cannot hit lead off

3) Has a little girl arm

4) Best way to describe him is "scrappy"

5) I think he looks like a cross between an elf and a douche bag

6) Cannot hit the long ball

I think I'm going to have to side with Theriot. He is getting paid much less to do the same job, and will basically be equally as effective.

What do you think?

Rubbing it in

2010-11-23T13:04:00.003-06:00

In your face everyone else. Mostly because I refuse to talk about my playoff predictions (since they were horribly off), I just want to bring to light that I predicted the most correct award winners. I correctly pegged Votto, Josh Hamilton, Neftali Feliz, and Buster Posey. Just to recap all of the other mid-season predictions;

Tristan (4/6 correct) - First Place
AL MVP: Josh Hamilton
NL MVP: Joey Votto
AL Cy: Cliff Lee
NL Cy: Josh Johnson
AL Rookie: Neftali Feliz
NL Rookie: Buster Posey

Kyle (2/6 correct) - Second Place
AL MVP: Miguel Cabrera
NL MVP: Joey Votto
AL Cy: Jered Weaver
NL Cy: Ubaldo Jimenez
AL Rookie: Neftali Feliz
NL Rookie: Stephen Strasburg

Zach (1/6 correct) - Third Place
AL MVP: Miguel Cabrera
NL MVP: Joey Votto
AL Cy: Cliff Lee
NL Cy: Josh Johnson
AL Rookie: Austin Jackson
NL Rookie: Jamie Garcia

Cooly (0/6 correct) - Fourth Place
AL MVP: Miguel Cabrera
NL MVP: Ubaldo Jimenez
AL Cy: David Price
NL Cy: Josh Johnson
AL Rookie: Brennen Boesch
NL Rookie: Jamie Garcia

Garcia - Dead Last for refusing to play along and vote.

Now if only I could manage my fantasy baseball teams as well as I can see the future, I would be on to something.

Kim Jong-Il Hates Indians Baseball/Cleveland Too

2010-11-23T11:43:00.003-06:00

If you missed it today, North Korea fired shots at South Korea. Who could really say why, maybe it is because Kim Jong-Il is bat shit crazy; more likely North Korea was super pissed that South Korea won the Asian Games. (That is their title!).

Regardless of the why, we know that South Korea is mildly upset. Now, as many of you know Shin Soo Choo is South Korean (kind of like Mr. Anonymous). Choo was supposed to sign up for military duty within the next 2 years. However, since he lead his team to Total Victory, he has been granted a pardon from his military service. This made me extremely happy as one of my favorite players and my fantasy baseball pillar now can actually play baseball in his prime years.

Then, Kim Jong-Il had to go and fuck everything up. With this latest incident Choo can either run and hide from his military service, or fearless patriotism will consume him. My guess is that Choo ends up signing up for the Korean military and becomes the best fighter pilot since Ted Williams.

I guess we will just have to wait this one out. Let's all hope it doesn't end with a crazy Korean detonating a bunch of nukes.

Is Matt a Brewers Fan?

2010-11-18T11:56:00.003-06:00

A few posts ago in the comments section one of our staff members made an outlandish claim: Matt stated that he was a Cubs fan and a Brewers fan. This offended every sensibility that T-Pain had and he declared somewhat of a war on Matt. T-Pain could not comprehend how someone could have their 2 favorite teams reside in the same division. He felt this betrayed a good baseball knowledge. In his own defense, Matt claimed that he was a proud Brewers fan before they transferred to the National League and that he should be grandfathered in.

How can we prove that Matt was a Brewers fan when the Cerveceros were in the AL?

The other writers and i have compiled a quiz that should settle the score. The scoring will be completely subjective and I will serve as the administrator of the quiz. In order to obtain the most accurate results, we must use a Gentleman's Agreement with Matt. Matt must promise not to use any Internet sources to find these answers. As I have known him since we were 10, I feel as though I have a strong grasp on the questions Matt does and does not know. If I suspect any cheating on his part sanctions will be brought upon him.

Without further ado, THE QUIZ (I also implore everyone to attempt to take The Quiz. I will leave a scoring key in the comments section in a few days. Let's all test our knowledge of the Brewers)

(Side Note: I've requested that the questions either be geared toward general Brewers knowledge or in depth team knowledge from the 1990's or 2000's, as to yield the best results)

1 Point Questions

1) In what year did the Brewers win the World Series? (got to start off easy)
2) What was the name of the Brewers' former Stadium?
3) What years did Robin Yount win the AL MVP? (1 point per correct answer)
4) What year did the Brewers shift to the National League?
5) Please spell Hall of Fame Brewers' announcer's last name.
6) Who was the Brewers owner before he sold the franchise in 2004?
7) What was the Brewers original team name?
8) What were the 3 original types of sausages to race?
9) What are the current sausages that compete in the Sausage Race?
10) Name the player responsible for striking the Sausage with a baseball bat. (Bonus 5 points: which Sausage was struck)

2 Point Questions

11) Which double play combination patrolled the infield from 1995-1999?
12) Which slugger patrolled Left and Right Field for the Brewers from 1999-2007?
13) Name the players who's numbers are retired by the Brewers. (2 points per correct answer)
14) How many division titles and pennants have the Brewers won?
15) What year was the Sausage Race first introduced?
16) Who were the Brewers playing when Yount recorded his 3,000th hit? (5 Bonus points for getting the pitcher)
17) The 1987 Brewers team nickname was...

My own scoring...

Name your favorite Brewer All Time and Currently.
Name the Brewers Team Leaders in Hits/Home Runs/RBI/SB/Wins/Saves/Strike Outs

Please leave your comments in the comment section and I will give each a score. Remember, NO CHEATING!

Office Baseball Talk: Tristan vs. Bob

2010-11-17T11:29:00.005-06:00

I love arguing with Bob about sports issues. While most of the time I rely on statistics, experience, and games I have watched, Bob normally relies on gut and stats that cannot be measured (teamwork, intelligence, love, etc.). Thus brings me to this post. At this very moment, we are battling over the future of Gordon Beckham on the Chicago White Sox.

Bob's only point is that Beckham had a terrible second season. He thinks that Beckham was simply lucky his rookie season, and now that pitchers have a scouting report on him, he is doomed. Bob's solution you ask? Trade him now. Quote from Bob, "Sell high on him." Yes Bob, sell high on a player who just batted .252 with 9 home runs in 2010. Not sure what the definition of selling high is. . .

My side of the argument? While I don't believe in sophomore slumps, I do kind of see the scouting report aspect. Pitchers quickly adapted to him in 2010 and Beckham didn't respond very well. Combine that with switching positions and the added pressure of a pennant race, and you get a bad season at the plate. Rough, but kind of expected it.

Another reason for digression? Beckham is still relatively new to this. Most players come into the league with a few minor league seasons under their belt, hitting every level of the system while seeing more and more talent. Beckham had only played in 59 minor league games before he was called up to the Sox. He hadn't even played in half of a minor league season before he was required to produce at the highest level.

Another reason against trading him? He is cheap and controllable. Bob doesn't really get this, which is why he will never be a major league GM, but Beckham is under team control until 2016 and his salary last year was a mere $445,000. Last year in Minnesota, Orlando Hudson was paid $5 million for roughly the same stats (.262 with 6 HR). But what do I know. . .

The kid just turned 24 years old a few months ago, fans have to be patient. Just think if the Pirates would have "sold high" on Jose Bautista after his second year. . . oh wait. . .they did. A nice big old FU from him as he blasted 54 home runs in Toronto this year. But who am I kidding, this is Chicago we are talking about. They will sell out their team as soon as the division is decided. . .even if it is April.

Where Will the Free Agents Land: Wedman Style

2010-11-15T10:12:00.003-06:00

Do you want to know where all of the major free agents are headed? Just listen to us. As one of our columnist stated, "My predictions (or knowledge since I went into the future to verify all of these) are as follows." Lets get one thing straight, while we are serious probably 47% of the time, we are wrong 0% of the time. Not to mention, with five of us predicting their destinations, one of us should get it right.

1. Cliff Lee - We were split between the Yankees (3) and the Rangers (2). However, I wouldn't be surprised to see Cliff give Start Wedman a big ole FU and sign elsewhere.

2. Carl Crawford - Majority decision here brings Carl to the Angels (4). Yankees don't need him and no one else has the payroll to sign him. The Cubs (1) came in second with one vote ("hopeless optimism").

3. Jayson Werth - Once again, the majority of the Start Wedman staff believes that Werth will land with the Boston Red Sox (4). One writer, who shall remain nameless, thinks that the Athletics will be the dark horse this free agency. That writer is also the same one from the Carl Crawford debacle above.

4. Derek Jeter - Yankees. I can't write anymore because of how sick he makes me.

5. Adrian Beltre - According to us, Beltre will be with the Red Sox (4) on opening day. Tigers (1) could be a surprise option. . .

6. Bruce Chen - Hanshin Tigers, Brewers, Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, starring role in Major League IV, and Dodgers all came up. Bruce Chen has a wide array of opportunities in front of him.

7. Victor Martinez - Seems to fit well with the Detroit Tigers (4). Either that, or we all watch and read the same media options. The Rays (1) do have a need at catcher/1B but I'm not sure their payroll can take that big of a hit.

8. Paul Konerko - The White Sox (2) seem to be the most logical destination. He also has a close relationship to KW that could keep him in town. Diamondbacks (1), Angels (1) , and Royals (1 - "where players go to die") could step in and steal the first baseman.

9. Adam Dunn - Could be the most interesting free agent on the market. Power hitting lefty who can play a variety of positions (LF, RF, 1B, and DH) but no one knows where he will land. Wedman writers think he fits with the Tigers (2), Cubs (1), White Sox (1), or Rangers (1).

10. Rafael Soriano - Does anyone else think he will get extremely over paid a la K-Rod a few years ago? While I haven't heard any rumors yet, we seem to think he will end up with the Yankees (3) as a Mariano Rivera's successor. Also, with only F-Rod left in their bullpen, the Angels (2) might scrape together the cash to bring him on board.

11. Lance Berkman - Our five writers listed five different teams that could go after the Big Puma this off-season. White Sox (1 - guess who. . .), Blue Jays (1), Astros (1), Royals (1), and Diamondbacks (1) may call on the old, declining, veteran switch hitter.

12. Carl Pavano - The Twins (2) and Royals (2) tie for most interest in the reformed righty's services. Throw in the Brewers (1) and you have an interesting overpaying threesome. How the Twins or Royals could manage to pay Pavano as much as he wants is beyond me, but I do know that we are never wrong.

13. Carlos Pena - Speaking of declining first basemen, we have our second unanimous pick. All five of us see the Nationals (5) signing Pena to a large deal this off-season.

14. Aubrey Huff - Even though the Giants (3) have the upper hand in negotiations this winter, there have been other teams contacting Huff's agent for his services. Could the Rays (1) or Cubs (1) be a few of those teams?

15. Manny - Two of us think that he will land with the Athletics (2). One of us thinks he will continue to decline with the Diamondbacks (1). One chose retirement (1). Finally, Manny will join AI in Turkey (1) and dominate baseball overseas.

We also think that the Cesar Salad will end up with the Cardinals. Nick Punto will go anywhere expect the White Sox. Juan Uribe will start the season with the Giants or with Bubba in jail. Kotsay and Jones will be back in the Windy City while Jermaine Dye signs a one year deal with the Gary Railcats.

So there you have it. While it isn't a complete list of the 2010-2011 free agents, this is the only list that matter. If you don't like it, you can get out.

The Derek Jeter Saga

2010-11-09T20:35:00.001-06:00

I know, I know, I know. Two Derek Jeter posts in a matter of hours of each other when we hardly post once a week? You are probably thinking that someone took Zach and I for some experimental lobotomies this weekend.

However, fear not, both posts offer Jeter, Yankee, and general New York bashing (for the most part)! Hooray baseball!

Anyways, my post will not revolve around the travesty of Jeter's Gold Glove win this afternoon since I'm sure somewhere in a dark basement, Bill James is dying of a brain aneurysm. May God rest his sweet, sweet, giant-book-writing soul. Instead, I will focus more on the other Jeter news that is setting the mass sports media on fire - the fact that, OMG, DEREK JETER DOESN"T HAVE A CONTRACT WITH THE YANKEES NEXT YEAR!!!!1!1!!!1!!

(How do you like that link to the boring, bland MLB Trade Rumors page even though I freaked out like a fourteen year old girl? Ah, my irony is hilarious.)

Now some are taking the news better than others. As one could have expected, most people around baseball are relatively calm because sometimes contracts do actually run their courses and players don't end up taking the last three years off with a "hip injury" a la Albert Belle. And of course, New Yorkers are not most people, which drives them to write terrible articles. (Zach, please FJM that for me - thanks a ton)

In order to make this whole situation a little easier to handle, let's lay out the facts.

1. Derek Jeter is a free agent. (Have to start slow)
2. Jeter is a future Hall of Famer, which comes with its usual end-of-a-star's-career pros and cons.
3. Jeter and everyone in baseball (except maybe Joe Buck and Tim McCarver) knows that he sucks. I don't think they really need that many reminders.
4. The Yankees are going to sign Jeter no matter what.

Given those facts, most of the debate has gone out the window. There's no need to worry about him signing with any other team. In fact, I really can't find any articles discussing another team being in the Derek Jeter negotiations; although, I'm surprised that Billy Beane hasn't phoned him up since he's all about bringing washed up veterans on board.

However, when Jeter finally signs this offseason, the only question is how much will the Yankees overpay him? Yes, his baseball production will not be anything worth what he will ultimately earn, but one also has to keep the dollar value of Derek Jeter the merchandise seller when signing him. You know that the Yankees (and ESPN) will promote the shit out of Jeter's 3,000 hit run. The money and media hullabaloo to be made over that whole ordeal, much to the chagrin of Zach and I, will dominate most of early portion of the season.

So what does Jeter get paid in the end? I honestly think he gets somewhere between $15M to $18M per year. Yes, he will be paid more than double of what his baseball production will be worth. And yes, the Yankees and Brian Cashman said something stupid about their franchise existing without Jeter possibly, but that's not going to happen. Jeter will not be allowed to get his 3,000th hit with another team because the Yankees will never allow that situation to happen, Jeter knows he has a slight upper hand in the negotiations, which he will push just below the $20M range (he's got a Minka Kelly to feed!).

But enough about that Derek Jeter contract bullshit, it's now time for the real reason I wanted to write this post. It's November, which means The National get to rock out with their Jeter ode. Hell yeah.

MLB's Least Honorable Award Becomes a Mockery

2010-11-09T17:04:00.005-06:00

I am going to try not to swear during this post. I feel that the travesty that the voters for the Gold Glove need to feel shamed without the simple pleasures of a good curse. Gold Glove voters shamed the baseball world and forever brought skepticism to one of the decent ways of comparing fielders across eras. Willie Mays racked up countless Gold Gloves; Brooks Robinson even more. Being born in 1987, I will never have the pleasure of seeing these athletes chase down balls that mortals never dreamed of catching. The only way I can accurately assess just how great these fielders were compared to today's greats can only be measured through accolades, written and award based. The coaches and players in charge of giving this award sullied the spirit of the accomplishment.

Derek Jeter has won the American League Gold Glove for the short stop position.

This is offensive and appalling.

Since there are seemingly 2 schools of thought on how to value baseball talents, I would like to argue why Jeter winning makes no sense in any realm of thinking.

See it with your eyes types (symptoms of this include enjoying Joe Morgan commentary, liking the White Sox because they are grindy and sharing any baseball beliefs with Ozzie Guillen)

Many of you may be thinking, "Derek Jeter is the best shortstop to ever play the game. He is a True Yankee and has lead his team to 12 Championships all through pure desire and heart." These people are fucking morans.

Derek Jeter has not even been useful on defense for at least 5 years. Yes, you are correct, Derek Jeter is very sure handed and he probably looks good banging his hot girlfriend. He made 6 errors this year! You are right, that is a phenomenally low amount of errors to make. However, you are missing the fact that he has absolutely no range. None. This is not arguable. During the ALCS, I tweeted that Elvis Andrus just made an amazing play and that absolutely separates Andrus from Jeter in this series. I only had to wait a half inning to find out how right I was. With Andrus at the plate, he hit a slow roller to short. Clearly hit slower and about a step closer to Jeter than the ball hit to Andrus in the prior inning. Derek Jeter, on the biggest stage, a True Yankee, did not come anywhere close to making this play.

Jeter simply does not have the quickness anymore to play the position at even an average level. I don't want to get to numbers heavy in this section because I will be hitting you with a lot of that in the next section, but a typical meat head stat is fielding percentage. Going of this metric, Jeter was far and away the leader. However going to another simple statistic you can see how limited his range truly is. Derek Jeter was 6th with 365 Assists this year (Alexei Ramirez with 499 lead the category). Again Jeter made 6 errors all year, and was nowhere close to the lead in assists. How can you explain the 134 more Assists made by Ramirez? Ground ball pitchers? The opposition never hitting to Jeter for fear his Yankee Pride will get them out? I think over the course of an entire season most of those intangibles tend to even out. The only way you can account for this discrepancy is acknowledging Jeter's subpar range.

The Sabermetric View (symptoms include: being a pompous jerk and constantly believing you are right)

First of all, I would like to show you the leaders in the AL this year in UZR (I acknowledge this is not a perfect stat, but still!). Oh, you did not see Jeter's name on that list. That's funny, probably because he is not on it. Check page 2! That is right, your Gold Glove winner is not even in the Top 40 of players who played shortstop in the AL this year in a metric widely considered the best defensive measure, right now.

Not only that, but he was a -4.7!!!!! Not even close to being average, a decidedly terrible fielder just won the 2010 Gold Glove Award. Matt Tuiasosopo finished higher on the list than him! Do you even know who he is? Me neither, but his fucking brother wasn't even good enough to beat out JaMarcus Russel for the Raiders QB job, so he has to fucking suck major ass.

Seriously, Alexei Ramirez should have walked home with this award and by a huge margin. The guy had an outstanding year defensively. At the very least, Cliff Pennington could have taken the Gold Glove home. Hell, the A's were downright horrible offensively and still managed a .500 record on the year. You know how many A's won Gold Gloves? Zero! How good of a defensive team do you have to have to obtain a .500 record when your best hitter is Ryan Sweeney??????

Much like most of the non baseball-stupid world I'm angry that Jeter won the award. Not just because an inferior defender won the award again (I believe Eric Chavez won 4 Gold Gloves on the A's and he didn't even have to get out of his hospital bed). I am angry at this bullshit Derek Jeter/Yankees bias that causes baseball writers to swoon. I dislike Derek Jeter thoroughly.

Freddy "Dirty" Sanchez Gets His Groove On

2010-11-08T13:09:00.004-06:00

While enjoying lunch in my luxurious office I was surfing around about the baseball playoffs and found this absolute gem of a youtube video. I'm not judging at all because I know if I just made it into the playoffs or won a series or something I would be doing the exact same thing (just of course with much better dancing skills).

So I felt as the classy blog we are here at YSSW we owe it to ourselves to comment on this video of Freddy getting down with his bad self. I'll start with my observations:

1. I know I was very sad to discover that the woman who had the boots with the fur on that Big Fred was dancing with was actually his wife.

2. I couldn't help but notice that none of the wifes/side girlfriends had on real pants.

3. Aaron Rowand is a great supporting cast.

I know when I go crazy on the dance floor my wife usually just ignores me to the extent of pretending not to know me. Just another reason not to allow cameras in the locker room after a certain point in the night.

No Love For Bobby V?

2010-11-03T19:25:00.006-05:00

While this is my first article in a while due to laziness and not having time to write because of school/work, traveling, and softball 5 nights a week, I make an appearance to bring up my disappointment. I may get a lot of grief for writing this article, but who could not love this man?

As many probably know (many as in the 10 people that even read this) that picture is when Bobby Valentine was kicked out of a game one day and returned in his amazing disguise. Seriously how awesome is it that he gets kicked out but tries to come back after altering his appearance!

As a closet Brewers fan I was really hoping that Bobby would come manage the Brewers! Not because I thought he gave them the best chance to win, but because his humor, shenanigans, overall dickheadness would be good for Milwaukee.

To clear things up, most of you know I am a huge Cubs fan. It's hard to keep my loyalty. Not because the team constantly loses and I'm a fair weather fan. There are many reasons to hate the Cubs, but that's a whole other article (top 3 reasons: I hate other Cubs fans, Jim Hendry/Andy McFAIL, & Wrigley Field/tickets.) There is at least one person that can relate to hating a team because of constant fails and stupid moves. Maybe a fan that likes the Vikings......A team that trades a 3rd round pick for a former fan favorite, then releases him because he just doesn't fit the team. Well Mr. Childress, you're an idiot.

Getting back to Bobby, I wish he would have received more consideration for the Cubs. Better yet going to the Brewers would have been a dream. I had big plans if Bobby were to be hired by either. I was going to get a Bobby Valentine shirt (I'm too cheap to get a jersey) and wear the classic sunglasses/fake nose combo like so:

Believe me I think the Cubs got it right. The Brewers may have too. I will be the first person to second guess either hiring. In Cubs terms, I was probably the only person in the world that wanted Bobby as their manager, and when Quade fails, everyone will say Sandberg was the man. WRONG!

I do think Quade will be successful, but it will take a new GM to create that success. Hendry needs to go, so lets start rounding up the candidates for next GM! Keep Valentine on speed dial Rickets family.

Elijah Dukes Hates his Kids. Now Making Efforts to Kill Them

2010-11-03T12:00:00.002-05:00

A recent ESPN.com report indicated that Elijah Dukes has been arrested again.

"Authorities say former Major League Baseball player Elijah Dukes has been jailed in Tampa on charges related to allegedly failing to pay child support."

It seems Elijah is just taking a more deliberate route to complete the journey of killing his own children. Withholding his child support payments, Elijah is clearly hoping that his kids will will fall victim to poverty and be unable to feed themselves. Without food, they will surely starve, absolving Elijah of his fatherly duties... O wait, he has 4 other children with 3 other women to take care of. Can Elijah Dukes brainstorm 5 different ways to murder his own children? Based on his first threat against them left on a voicemail, I'm not so sure:

"Hey, dawg. It’s on, dawg. You dead, dawg. I ain’t even bullshitting. Your kids too, dawg. It don’t even matter to me who is in the car with you . . . all I know is . . . when I see your motherfucking ass riding, dawg, it’s on. As a matter of fact, I’m coming to your motherfucking house.

Just in case she failed to understand his intentions, he also sent her a photo of a gun."

Good Luck, Elijah! Hopefully without all those kids around you will be free to yuck it up (pictured not yucking it up: Josh Willingham) more with Nyjer Morgan in the outfield.

Bunting Strategy

2010-11-02T06:01:00.001-05:00

In the top of the 7th in tonight's World Series, the Giants had runners on first and second with no one out and Aubrey Huff at the plate. All of my past baseball sensibilities say that this is a clear bunt situation. Even after finding out that Huff had not bunted all year, the classic baseball mind thinks that you have to bunt here. Hell, a fly ball or a slow grounder through the drawn in infield will score at least a run.

The Sabermetric side of me was screaming the opposite. Don't ever bunt! It is almost never beneficial for your team to give away an out.

I know most of you would probably agree with the classic baseball stance of bunting right here, but let me try to explain the Sabermetric side. After giving up the out with Huff, a batter who had been doing well, you have Pat Burrell (huge playoff slump), Edgar Renteria (hot hitting this series), and Aaron Rowand (he has been bad for 3 seasons now).

The quite likely scenario of Pat Burrell striking out occurs (Cliff Lee was on the mound and mowing down batters at this point). What should have occurred next was pitching around (not intentionally walking, but pitching carefully) Edgar Renteria. This would have taken the bat out of two of your hotter hitters in Huff and Renteria and put the onus of driving in runs on the horribly slumping Burrell and the guy you don't trust to start any other game this series in Rowand.

We all know what really happened, Renteria was pitched to and jacked a 3 run shot, but I'm saying that if the Rangers were to play that one correctly they should have been out of the inning with no damage. Bunting in that situation is incorrect because of the next hitters in your lineup. I would much rather have three chances of Huff, Burrell, and Renteria trying to drive guys from first and second in then Burrell and Rowand with men on second and third.

Nate Schierholtz' Brothers

2010-11-01T11:56:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, during Game 4, Tim McCarver had some interesting things to say about Nate Schierholtz. Allow me to paraphrase his comments below:

Tim McCarver: "I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot. Something stupid. You know most father's that are skateboarders tend to have sons that are skateboarders (Editor's Note: He actually said that last sentence. I'm not sure where he pulled that wisdom from, most likely out of his ass).

... but unlike his father, who was a skateboarder, Nate Schierholtz is a baseball player." (said that line too)

"He also has a younger brother, Vai who plays at Air Force"

(I thought McCarver said that his brother's name was Vibe, which sparked my interest in writing this. Even though my brief internet search found that his brother's true name was Vai it leads me to the same question: How can you name one son something boring like Nate and the other Vai???? I don't understand how that is possible. Sure, the father's name is also Vai, but if that name wasn't good enough for the first son, why is it good enough for the 2nd? This is similar to naming one of your sons Joe and the other one Crazy Horse. I absolutely hate when parents name one of their kids something wacky. It means that Wacky son is thinking, what the fuck drugs were the parents on when they named me, and boring son to think "wow, I have a fucking lame name, I must be a complete suckass".)

Also, during my short stint with the Google search, I found they have another brother named Cainan! Cainan, Vai... and Nate. Oh, and Cainan is their families turd. Not only is he not a successful baseball player, his only available news is that he was charged with a DUI, hit and run, and everyone in the family feels very ashamed of him.

2010 Start Wedman MVP Voting

2010-10-27T11:25:00.000-05:00

The end of the baseball season brings some time-honored traditions in the late fall. The World Series (of course), hearing about Yankee mystique, putting Tim McCarver and Joe Buck on mute, and Elmer Fudd hats. But none of these things is quite as important or as fun as seeing baseball writers be dumbasses when submitting their MVP ballots.

I have always enjoyed examining the total voting points of each MVP every year. Without failure, I always find a few chuckles in seeing how the entrusted baseball writers of this country cast their ballots. Usually, most of them are pretty close in voting for the true MVP of each league since statistics over a long stretch usually support who was perceived to have the best seasons; although, often writers are swayed by which players have the best last few months to push their teams into the playoff single-handedly (hence, resulting in things like Frank Thomas finishing 4th in 2006).

But far and away, the best votes are the guys who mingle at the bottom with lowly one, two, and three point totals. These are the votes that will not count for shit. I suppose that some high and mighty writers believe that they should place the 10th actual best player in the league in that slot in order to honor the system, but those guys are delusional. That's why the best votes are the humorous ones like Steve Kline in 2001 or Andy Benes in 1994. Hilarious votes. Even made funnier because I bet that some of these votes I find so laughter-inducing were probably serious on the part of the writer. But that makes them even funnier.

That's why I decided that we had to have our own MVP voting process here at Start Wedman. The participants were myself, Zach, Garcia, Tristan, and Mr. Anonymous (who went wild with comments on each vote that were cut to save space on the interwebs) - so you will be able to guess where some of the random votes came from. Plus, I added in the top ten players for WAR in each league to balance out the silliness a little bit. I will keep my comments after each voting briefish so that we can discuss the results more in the comments.

Without further adieu, here is the result in the National League (number of first place votes is in parentheses next to the player's name):

1	Joey Votto (4)	57
2	Albert Pujols (2)	54
3	Carlos Gonzalez	41
4	Roy Halladay	34
5	Matt Holliday	20
6	Troy Tulowitzki	20
7	Ryan Zimmerman	14
8	Ubaldo Jimenez	13
9	Adrian Gonzalez	12
10	Josh Johnson	7
11	Jayson Werth	7
12	Ryan Braun	6
13	Martin Prado	6
14	Adam Wainwright	6
15	Ryan Howard	5
16	Adam Dunn	4
17	Andres Torres	4
18	Marlon Byrd	3
19	Clay Zavada's Mustache	3
20	Drew Stubbs	3
21	Rickie Weeks	3
22	Aubrey Huff	2
23	Omar Infante	2
24	Brooks Kieschnick	1
25	Andrew McCutchen	1
26	Colby Rasmus	1
27	Chase Utley	1

Wow, look at that, we were able to have a pretty legit vote. I imagine that the real results will look similar to this when they are released - with Votto edging out Pujols just barely. I expect that Huff, Torres, and Lincecum might see a few extra votes with the Giants making the World Series. And I can only hope that Clay Zavada's Mustache fairs better with the real baseball writers.

The American League is a little wackier:

1	Jose Bautista	48
2	Miguel Cabrera (1)	47
3	Josh Hamilton (3)	44
4	Robinson Cano (2)	40
5	Evan Longoria	26
6	Paul Konerko	19
7	Cliff Lee	16
8	Adrian Beltre	14
9	Carl Crawford	13
10	Felix Hernandez	11
11	Vladimir Guerrero	9
12	Joe Mauer	9
13	Alex Rodriguez	7
14	CC Sabathia	6
15	Ichiro Suzuki	5
16	Ken Griffey Jr.	4
17	Nick Swisher	3
18	Shin-Soo Choo	3
19	Justin Verlander	3
20	Juan Pierre	2
21	C.J. Wilson	1

This one came out all sorts of messed up. First, Jose Bautista wins by one point despite not getting a first place vote, but he fell between second and fourth on every ballot. Josh Hamilton got ass raped by Zach, who didn't place the born again Christian anywhere on his ballot. Because of Hamilton not placing on Zach's ballot, Cabrera should have walked away with the MVP, but WAR had him ranked 9th in the AL, which led to Bautista's surprising victory. I can only hope the MVP voting works out this way in real life. Fuck Josh Hamilton.

Congrats to Joey Votto and Jose Bautista for winning the first YSSW MVP Awards - I hope it means a lot to them.

2011 Cubs Payroll…Seriously?

2010-10-22T15:00:00.006-05:00

So I was watching some sweet CLTV while I was working out and they were talking about how the Cubs are trying to cut money from their payroll for 2011. They threw up a chart of the guys who are guaranteed money next year and how much they are due, their graphic was far less cool than my spreadsheet I made below (As many of you know, making spreadsheets is one of my favorite past times, the more unnecessary the better):

Player Name	Length / Total Value (salary + p-r bonus)	2011
Soriano, Alfonso	8 yr/$136M (07-14)	$19,000,000.00
Zambrano, Carlos	5 yr/$91.5M (08-12)+13 opt	$18,875,000.00
Ramirez, Aramis	5 yr/$75M (07-11)+12 opt	$14,600,000.00
Fukudome, Kosuke	4 yr/$48M (08-11)	$14,500,000.00
Dempster, Ryan	4 yr/$52M (09-12)	$14,500,000.00
Silva, Carlos	4 yr/$48M (08-11)+12 opt	$12,750,000.00
Byrd, Marlon	3 yr/$15M (10-12)	$5,500,000.00
Samardzija, Jeff	5 yr/$10M (07-11)+12 & 13 opts	$3,500,000.00
Grabow, John	2 yr/$7.5M (10-11)	$4,800,000.00
Total		$108,025,000.00

Jim Hendry you suck!!! Maybe Pat Quinn can lower the Cubs payroll instead of lowering taxes and other stuff. Seriously how tired is everyone of these stupid campaign commercials (best one, not from IL though)? They have made me not want to vote for anyone, I may write in George Ryan. Anyone want to play Illinois politician who is/was/will be in jail bingo? I’m not hating, just saying. “That’s the Chicago way,” but back then they didn’t get caught as much, they killed people.

Back to the point: The cubs suck and they are paying guys a ton of money to guy who outright suck, and/or underperform. Seriously relook at that chart, it’s crazy. Nice work Jim Hendry. How are you still employed? Someone please tell him re-signing Jim Edmonds and Aaron Miles is a bad idea, again. I’m sure he already has calls into their agents.

Let’s dive into the crap here Slumdog Millionaire style.

Soriano: $19 million next year to continue to suck. Cannot play the outfield, yet people think he is still getting used to it and are making excuses for him. He has been out there since 2006! Also he still cannot hit a curveball…mindboggling. He will also be around until 2014, fist bump Jim Hendry next time you see him. My favorite attribute he has brought to the team is his (promised) speed, he had 5 steals last year.

Zambrano: I personally am a fan of paying people not to play, shows signs of a good investment. Let’s give a huge contract to a pitcher whose career stems on mediocre pitching, mental instability and swinging like a crazy man every time he gets to the plate. I really hope next year the Cubs treat him like Pedro Cerrano.

Ramirez: Hopeless optimism is key to being a good Cubs fan, so that’s what I am sticking with for Rami. Next year he will be back over 100 RBI.

Fukudome: He was good the first game he played for the Cubs. Since then the only good thing we have to show for it are racially insensitive shirts that vendors sell outside the stadium, along with the Fukudome Headband (I think they are 10 for $1 now). $14.5 million to a spot start fill in outfielder. I believe we should all simply greet him with the first part of his last name (sound it out).

Dempster: He won 15 games last year which means next year if he does the same he will get just about $1 million per win… I hope Quade moves him back out to the pen next year so we can enjoy more of his bullpen antics, it really distracted from his crappy relief work.

Silva: He got hurt last year because he was fat. Enough said.

Byrd: The man should get a medal for playing through the crap around him last year. He also has a double animal name (sound it out again). Marlon Byrd, 10,000 cool points to the flying fish.

Samardzija: Really long name and loving El Amigo means guaranteed 5 year contract.

Grabow: Not wasting my time, it’s John Grabow. Right handed hitters hit .811 against him, seriously?!?

So am I hopelessly optimistic for next year? Of course. Do I wonder how the Cubs are going to win more than 45 games next year? Absolutely. Having over $100 million committed to mainly crappy players is not a good formula for building a good team, i.e. last year’s fiasco of a season. Do I have a solution? No, other than just get better players and do not pay bad ones as much as they are now. I merely wanted to point out the stupidity of Jim Hendry and the absolutely huge hole the Cubs are starting with for next year.