Headhunting

I'm not sure if I've written about this before or not, but my feelings on baseball's book of unwritten etiquette are complicated. I feel like there are plenty of things that are frowned upon rightly (like baserunners calling fielders off of pop flies, a la Alex Rodriguez), quite a few that are unjustly outlawed (celebrating anything, ever), and some that are considered part of the game that shouldn't (like most, if not all, instances of intentionally throwing at a batter).

A few of these came into conflict the past couple of nights in the Dodgers-Diamondbacks series, and for me it's a really good example of baseball's automated policing system going awry. Which should surprise nobody, considering the fact that a 95 mph fastball to the ribs is judge, jury, and executioner.

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On Tuesday night, the Diamondbacks and Dodgers played a baseball game. During the seventh inning of that game, Gerardo Parra faced Hong-Chih Kuo with the bases empty and two outs. Parra decided to bunt, for some reason - with none on and two outs, I presume he was trying to bunt for a hit, as there's no other sane explanation. He squared really early, though, so I don't know what was going on there. Here's where the pitch went (credit Chad Moriyama, via True Blue LA):



As the post on True Blue LA mantions, Kuo doesn't have the best control in the league, and the Dodgers had a one-run lead at that point - why put the tying run on base? I don't think he was trying to hit Parra on purpose, and surely not square in the face; probably he was just going inside to make the bunt tougher to execute, and since he changed his pitch location at the last second he missed. That's an uninformed guess, but it makes a fair amount of sense.

What also makes sense is a man getting mad about a baseball being thrown at his face, intentionally or not. I certainly would. So when Parra homered later in the at-bat, he styled it - he watched it go (it was a no-doubter) and took his time rounding the bases. Honestly, considering some of the things I've seen people do to celebrate scoring in other sports, this is pretty mild, and understandable considering the circumstances. "You're going to throw at my face? Okay, now this is happening." In the grand scheme of things, not that bad.

Unless you're the Dodgers, who considered it a mortal sin. Catcher A.J. Ellis, who I've never heard of (possibly more a commentary on the amount of attention I pay the Dodgers than on his skill as a baseballer, as his half-win above replacement in 25 games is certainly not terrible), had words with Parra as he finished off his home run. And Clayton Kershaw went absolutely nuts (again, via Chad Moriyama by way of True Blue LA).



So something was probably destined to happen in the next game, which Kershaw (one of the top pitchers in the league, by the way) started. And sure enough, when Parra led off the sixth inning, Kershaw zitzed him (this one via Jeff Sullivan's incomparable Twitter).



As you can see at the end there, umpire Bill Welke follows up the HBP by zitzing Kershaw, ejecting him immediately. Typically I hate ejections, because I feel like a lot of them are preventable by umpires not taking themselves so damn seriously, but I am completely okay with this one.

Was Gerardo Parra being a bit of a prat? Maybe. I don't think Kuo was trying to hit him, and maybe he showed up the opposition. But I don't care about that. There's a foolproof solution to the problem of getting shown up after allowing a home run: don't give up home runs. It's one of the few things pitchers have some control over, and yet when it happens they tend, more often than not, to act like they've been victimized. Much of this was in Kuo's hands, and he botched it. It would have been bad enough if he'd been the one doing the headhunting, but for Kershaw to do it almost 24 hours later is just unconscionable. Everything here points to a premeditated attack on a specific individual for a pretty lame reason, and it puts a bit of a black mark on my estimation of a really, really good young pitcher.

I don't want to go full Plaschke here (I really REALLY don't), I don't want to get self-righteous and overbearing about meaningless stuff, but I really don't think this is meaningless. I tire of the self-importance of baseball players. They seem to think that anything that upsets them is A Blight On The Game, and take it them upon themselves to rectify such slights with deadly force. Let's not forget - it's hard to control the placement of a thrown baseball, and the impact of a fastball can change lives. People have been hit before and been thereafter unable to play baseball and earn a living. A man has died on the field. A fastball aimed at the ribs can just as well end up in the eye, just as Kuo's pitch likely wasn't meant for Parra's head. In almost every occasion, this is simply an inappropriate way for a pitcher to express displeasure about a guy reminding you that you screwed up.

I love baseball, and compared to a lot of sports it's not that bad about this, but there is a lot left from sporting antiquity still in the game, and most of it needs to leave. The idea that trying to injure someone is legitimate justice for a perceived slight; the idea that celebrations of good plays are evil; the idea that there is some great Form of Baseball that must be protected. A guy almost got hit in the face. He hit a home run. He enjoyed it. Why is that something that should cause the gnashing of teeth and the rending of clothes? Just grow up, already.

Sunday night liberation

When I found out that ESPN was shaking up its Sunday Night Baseball announcing team, replacing both Jon Miller and Joe Morgan, this was my first reaction. In short, sheer jubilation.

I've never had a problem with Jon Miller; in fact, I think he's a pretty good play-by-play announcer. As he's gotten older he's become more prone to making mistakes, but he typically catches them and corrects them. I like his voice and the energy he brings to a game, and he has a good feel for the rhythm of a baseball game. Others feel differently, but I've never really understood most of the complaints about him. He'll be missed, at least by me.

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An aside: one of the most common complaints that I've heard about Jon Miller is that he mispronounces Carlos Beltrán's name (obviously, this is a complaint that I hear mostly from Mets fans). Now if there's anyone who reads this who has more expertise in Spanish than I, please correct me, but from four years of studying the language, I'm 99% sure that I have this right. Beltrán's name is spelled as I have it, with an accent mark on the "a." Typically in Spanish the penultimate syllable is accented, unless there's a mark as there in in this case. Additionally, all "a" sounds in Spanish are short (like saying "ah," like when a doctor's examining your throat). Long story short, Jon Miller (who's fluent in Spanish, if you're wondering) is right, and everyone else is wrong.

Joe Morgan, on the other hand, is the cause of my glee. I don't think I need to go into why I and practically all other baseball fans dislike him; hell, there was a whole website devoted to his suckitude for a period of several years. Suffice it to say, I'm happy for the change, and this all has me thinking of how enjoyable SNB could become next season. That all depends, though, on who the new team is. Fire up the Speculation Machine!

Play-by-play

Jon Sciambi: This is my first choice, as well as a fairly unlikely one. ESPN's probably going to go with a well-known game with a lot of experience, a person who the casual fan already knows. Sciambi is not that. However, he is one of my favorite baseball announcers.

He has experience with the regional networks of both the Marlins and the Braves, and he is presently working for ESPN, usually in mid-week games. You may have never seen him call a game; trust me, he's good.

One of the things I like most about Sciambi - and a marked change from the old crew - is his progressive take on the game. He's not an old-school baseball guy, and he's well-versed in sabermetrics and advanced analysis methods. He's still mindful, though, of the fact that the vast majority of the baseball-watching public is not on the cutting edge or even near it, and works advanced thinking into his game calls in an easily accessible way. He talks about doing just that here. In my eyes, Sciambi really brings the whole package, and would be a great straight man for a SNB broadcast team.

Dan Shulman, Dave O'Brien: I don't know as much about either Shulman or O'Brien as I do about Sciambi, so I may be underrating them, but in watching games that they've called, they've been pretty middle-of-the-road. They seem to be roughly replacement level announcers - they aren't outstanding, as far as I can tell, but they aren't terrible enough to drag a broadcast down. They'd be adequate, and because of that they're the most likely choices (that, and the fact that like Sciambi, both are currently employed by ESPN).

Chris Berman: OH HOLY GOD PLEASE NO. All I need is to have to listen to "BACK BACK BACK BACK" and "HE HIT THAT ALL THE WAY TO KENDALL PARK" every week. I hate almost everything about Chris Berman. It's bad enough that he exists at all; please don't let him ruin my favorite sport more than he's already ruined football. Since this is what I want least, it is of course the thing that is probably going to happen.

Color commentator

Steve Stone: I used to hate Stone when he was with the Cubs, back when he and Chip Caray were on WGN together almost daily. It had little or nothing to do with Stone, I just didn't like the Cubs much at the time. But in retrospect, he's a really good announcer. He knows a lot about the game, and he's particularly good at explaining what's happening without sounding smug and holier-than-thou (like Morgan did so much of the time) or sounding like a total idiot (the best example of this would be Rob Dibble). In particular, I like the fact that he had the guts to call out the Cubs that year for underachieving, which ended up getting him fired. That's something that I'd like to hear from a color guy - tell me why what a manager or team is doing is wrong, if it is. Don't pull punches if punches need to be thrown. He would be a very good pick, and is my favorite candidate.

Orel Hershiser: Again, Hershiser is pretty much a replacement level broadcaster, or maybe slightly above. I liked him relatively well on SNB, and he was definitely a step up from the atrocious Steve Phillips. He was willing to call out Morgan for some of the stupid things he'd say, and that's no small feat, considering how ensconced Morgan was at ESPN. He'd be acceptable, and maybe even good with Morgan out, but Stone would be far superior.

Jeff Brantley, Rick Sutcliffe: Kill me now. What I said above about Dibble goes for both of these former players as well. Neither is particularly intelligent, neither has a good television voice (the two are oddly similar, with a drawl that sounds vaguely self-important, like every comment is a gem worthy of immortality). Sutcliffe is more likely than Brantley, due to the fact that he's already an ESPN employee. Listening to either one weekly would be eardrum suicide. Sutcliffe or Brantley would be the worst possible scenario, and if either one ends up on SNB, I'd recommend against watching. It would be a Morgan redux.

So to sum up, the most likely team is probably one of Dan Shulman or Dave O'Brien teamed with Orel Hershiser. All are inoffensive, all are already employed by ESPN, and none are particularly widely disliked. That would be a good, solid team that I wouldn't hate, though it also wouldn't excite me. My dream duo would be Jon Sciambi and Steve Stone, but they're not likely (in large part because it's what I want most in the world). They'd be smart and progressive, and would actually improve the broadcast rather than dragging it down into stupidity and screaming. Which, incidentally, is exactly what would happen if ESPN put Berman and Sutcliffe or Brantley on Sunday Night Baseball. In fact, if that happens it's possible that Major League Baseball will fold on principle.

With the end of the Miller-Morgan administration, there's a chance that Sunday Night Baseball could turn the corner and become a truly great baseball broadcast. Knowing ESPN, though, they'll probably give us Chris Berman and Rick Sutcliffe, and I'll put a brick through my TV. At least now we'll all know what we're missing.

The revolution begins...at 2 PM Eastern

Today begins a new era in Mets baseball, one that honestly should have begun years ago - the post-Omar era. Sandy Alderson will officially be named the new general manager, and based on what I've read about him I'm very excited about the next four years.

I'm not a fool, I don't expect miracles from Alderson and his new regime; in fact, quite the opposite - I'd bet the Mets of 2011 won't be appreciably better than the Mets of 2010, unless the changes made in the roster are more drastic than I think they will be. The changes that Alderson will bring, though, are going to go far beyond the team's win-loss record, and that's what excites me.

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Over the past decade or so, the Mets have been a wreck, both on and off the field. They went to the World Series in 2000 and were arguably the best team in baseball in 2006 (though they lost in the NLCS). Aside from that, as a baseball-playing group, they've failed. They were "contenders" who missed the playoffs in 2001, 2007 and 2008 (spectacularly so in the latter two years). Every other year in the 21st century, the Mets have been flat-out bad. And I'm sure that it goes without saying that rooting for a crappy team isn't much fun.

If anything, the Mets have been even worse off the field. They haven't had quite the issues with players that some teams have, Francisco Rodriguez and Johan Santana notwithstanding. The real issue has been the non-player staff. Let's go through the greatest hits:

- In 2009, VP for player development Tony Bernazard challenged minor leaguers to fight after a game. The incident included Bernazard taking his shirt off, a la Jersey Shore.

- Shortly after that incident came to light, Bernazard nearly got in a fight with K-Rod after a game, for no discernible reason. He kept his shirt on that time.

- Obviously, getting in fights with the players isn't good, so Omar Minaya (finally) fired Bernazard. Simple enough? Well, not if the general manager of the Mets openly accuses a beat writer of "lobby" for a job with the team. (Read this transcript of the press conference. It pretty much explains all of the problems that Omar Minaya had as GM of the Mets.)

Beside all that, actual player decisions were made in a totally irrational fashion. Rich, long-term contracts were given to ageing and inconsistent players. Terrible trades were made. Player injuries were handled in a haphazard and simply dangerous fashion. Player development was, to put it bluntly, a joke. In short, Omar Minaya's Mets did everything wrong.

As a fan of a team, you want to be able to defend against outside mockery. When rival teams' fans take shots at your team, you want to be able to have something, anything, to use to defend your team. When Omar was in charge, there was no way to do that. The team was run in an irrational manner, and there's no way to rationally defend irrationality.

And that is a big reason why I'm thrilled about the installation of Sandy Alderson. I don't expect domination. I don't even expect a championship. I am smart enough to know that it's really hard to win a World Series, and that while fans should definitely hope to win, expecting to win is really only the realm of the arrogant and the egotistical. But what I do expect is rationality. I'm listening to Alderson's introductory press conference right now, and what I'm hearing is what I expected, based on what I know about Alderson - a smart, well-spoken man who thinks rather than feels. When Minaya was in charge, it seemed that most decisions were made based on faulty reasoning and gut reactions. Alderson says things like "the mathematics don't lie" and that on-base percentage and slugging percentage are important. That's the way to build a team that has the ability to win a championship, and more than anything, it's the way to make a franchise respectable again.

The Mets may not win the pennant every year for the next decade - in fact, they probably won't. But at least we know that the people in charge know what they're doing, that they will create and execute a plan, and that the plan will be based on sound principles. We know that we no longer have to fear that at any moment, team officials could be forcing a guy with a concussion to play, or challenging 20-year-old kids to fights. The team will not be a laughingstock, and that's a damn good first step.

A hurried baseball playoffs preview

I went for a run last weekend, and I needed to wear a glove. It's cold out, but it's still the kind of cold that makes you feel more awake than you really are, rather than the kind of cold that makes you wish you lived in Mallorca. And while this means many things, the thing it means for the purpose of this blog post is that it's time for playoff baseball.

It's been a rough couple of years for me as a baseball fan. The Mets haven't been legitimately good since I was a freshman in college. The Red Sox are out of the playoffs for the first time since that same year, but they haven't been a legitimate championship contender since the 2007 season (in which they were really strong contenders, contending longer than anyone else). In the past two seasons, the two teams I most hate - the Phillies and then the Yankees - won championships. It got to the point where I was sort of rooting for the Braves at one point this year. The Braves.

But though it's not much fun, with my favorite teams on early-fall vacations and my most despised primed for glory, I'm a baseball fan, so I'm obligated to watch the playoffs. Why? Because the playoffs are awesome, no matter who's playing. The only sport that has an argument for a superior playoffs is hockey, and that's mostly just because they have a cooler trophy. But that's not what I'm interested in talking about right now, mostly because it's far too Costasian and I'm far too tall to write like he talks.

I'm sticking to who's going to win and why it's going to happen. I know the games have started, but I tweeted the picks earlier. So I'm not using the first slate of games as a barometer - these are blind picks. They're blind in another way - though I love me some statistics, I'm going against my own advice and going mostly on gut feelings. We'll see how much I know about a baseball season that I largely ignored, for the sake of my emotional state. I'll talk a bit about the championship series and the World Series as I pick them, but I'll cover that more after the actual teams are set. I'm assuming I won't have a perfect record of picks here. Let's do this thing.
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ALDS: Rays over Rangers (3-1), Twins over Yankees (3-2)

There are two reasons I'm picking the Rays to win the first of the divisional series to start. First of all, I'm totally unconvinced that any team expecting to get anything out of Jeff Francoeur can win. He's played pretty well since the Mets traded him, but that's mostly (if not entirely) due to the small size of the available sample. He is not a good hitter. Of course, he's a bench player, because though he's a cocaine fan, Ron Washington is still apparently smarter than Jerry Manuel. So he's not really that much of a factor.

The main reason I'm picking the Rays is because I think they're much deeper than the Rangers. Josh Hamilton has been hurt, as has Evan Longoria. But the Rays don't rely on Longoria the same way that the Rangers lean on Hamilton. They also have a deeper pitching staff, to my eye. I feel like the Rangers have, to an extent, gotten fat on a weaker division out west, while the Rays have had to deal with the Yankees, Red Sox, and Blue Jays all summer. The Rays have performed better against better competition, and that's why they'll win this series.

In the other series, I'm going against history. The Yankees have beaten the Twins in the playoffs several times in the past decade, but this year I think the twins are going to finally break through. The main reason for this is my belief that these Yankees are very overrated. CC Sabathia is a very good pitcher (not the best in the league, but that's another post), but after him, they'll be relying on the injured Andy Pettite and the unknown quantity that is Phil Hughes. Their bullpen is Mariano Rivera and a collection of inconsistency. Their lineup is very good, but hitting doesn't win in the playoffs the same way it does in the regular season. They're going to have to lean on their pitching, and their pitching is going to crack at some point. The Yankees are going to win two games, but that's all.

NLDS: Phillies over Reds (3-0), Giants over Braves (3-1)

The Phillies are a good team. They have three pitchers better than the Reds' best, and I see no situation in which the Reds will be able to beat the Phillies. The Reds have some hitters, but I don't think that they'll break through against Halladay or Oswalt. Hamels is a bit less reliable in my eyes, but he's still better than Johnny Cueto. Also, as much as I dislike Hamels, he hasn't ended anyone's career.

The Giants and Braves can both pitch. Neither can hit. The Giants are better at pitching. They're going to win. (That, by the way, is the most laconic thing I've ever written.)

ALCS: Twins over Rays. This will be a very even series if it happens. Fundamentally sound, well-played baseball - entertaining for the fans, but maybe not anyone else. I see Joe Mauer having a huge series, and Jim Thome right behind him.

NLCS: Giants over Phillies. There will be about six runs scored in this series. The Giants are more used to having to scrape together runs, so they'll be better suited for a matchup like this.

World Series: Twins over Giants. The streak continues for San Francisco. Minnesota christens their new ballpark in style. Also, I'll get to say "Well played, Mauer" a lot.

Feel free to offer your own predictions in the comments, if you like. And if I said something stupid that is statistically unprovable, feel free to call me on it, but remember that this is based on my feel of the series, rather than...well, things that you can prove. It's less accurate, but it's more fun that way.

This is awesome: Best rant ever

In honor of the Mets beating the Indians last night (barely, thanks to the fact that Frankie Rodriguez is incapable of making anything easy ever), I present to you the greatest baseball rant in the history of baseball or rants. This is Bruce Drennan, Indians sportscaster, decrying their crappiness.



I don't know what he'd do if he was working for the Pirates.

Some things about Stephen Strasburg

The Blitzkrieg with pie on his face. Nice game, rook.

The history of humanity is littered with those who couldn't live up to the hype. Kwame Brown, Darko Miličić, Mark Prior, Brien Taylor. Every now and then, though, someone actually breaks through. When LeBron James was first coming into the NBA, and the hype surrounding him was at its height, I remember thinking that there wasn't any way for him to match expectations. Somehow, he did.

Seven innings pitched, 14 strikeouts, no walks.

I didn't think that there was any way that Stephen Strasburg could possibly come close to living up to the hype. I mean, Curt Schilling said a few weeks ago that he'd be the best pitcher in the majors the day he first stepped on a mound. These were lofty expectations that Strasburg had been saddled with. And somehow he actually surpassed them.
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I don't want to go too far into this, for a few reasons. Most of what can be said has already been said by people who said it better than I would have anyway. But I do want to mention a few things.

First of all, we need to not get too far ahead of ourselves. His first game was spectacular, but I've heard people talking about the Hall of Fame already. Nick Evans looked like a Hall of Famer after one game and now nobody even knows who he is. It was against the Pirates, it was a pitchers' umpire...blah blah blah. My newfound sabermetrics expertise leads me to say that the sample size is far too small to make a real judgement.

Now that I have that out of the way, HOLY CRAP DID YOU SEE HIM PITCH. I have never seen anything like that. Literally. I've been watching baseball for a long time, and I've never seen a pitcher like Stephen Strasburg, even for one start. I went to a restaurant with some friends to watch him. I was the only one who really wanted him to do well; one was a Pirates fan, the other didn't really have a reason that I'm aware of. They were both talking some smack before he started pitching. After about an inning, it died down because there wasn't anything to say. He gave up a home run; it was on a good pitch. He made next to no mistakes.

The most impressive thing to me was the fact that I was impressed by him. I'm not usually easily impressed, but at one point during the game I actually yelled with surprise at one of Strasburg's curveballs. It was moving at apparent fastball speed, and then it dropped about two feet. I have no idea how anyone's supposed to hit that.

It's going to be a little while before we know how good Stephen Strasburg's going to be over the long-term. But for one night, I'm willing to throw sample size and rationality out the window. That was a damned good performance by Strasburg last night, and it was fun to watch. And I am impressed.

(Could we ditch the "Mr. Precedent" nickname, also? Because it's horrible. Come up with something more awesome. Like The Blitzkrieg - after all, he does have a German-ish name.)

This is awesome: IKE FREAKING DAVIS

Ike Davis is my new personal hero. I've already commissioned a gold statue.

Stephen Strasburg is a chump. There's no way he can hit a ball this far. Ike Davis is already better than Albert Pujols, and he's closing fast on Lou Gehrig. Not quite to Keith Hernandez's level yet, though.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Stephen Strasburg is not a chump. This is all hyperbole.

The real hero

He used to make these catches ALL THE TIME. Most spectacular player I've ever seen.

I'm really upset by the non-perfect game last night. It's terrible that the game had to go down the way it did. But the biggest reason I'm upset is the fact that because of that horrible call, the greatest player of our time is being overshadowed on a day where he should be celebrated.

The third headline on ESPN.com today is the retirement of Ken Griffey, Jr. It's the second headline on MLB.com. Hell, even Fangraphs has more stuff on the imperfect game than on Griffey. And now I've talked about it for two paragraphs. And that is unfair to the career of one of the greatest baseball players ever.

Ken Griffey, Jr. was a large part of the reason why I'm a baseball fan. When I was a kid, the Mets weren't very good, and I wasn't a Red Sox fan yet. My connection with baseball was based primarily around my father, and the video game Ken Griffey, Jr. Presents Major League Baseball. I played the game and I watched Junior play, and I was obsessed. I had a Junior signature glove. I had a Mariners hat. If you know me, you know I wear my hats backward most of the time. Well, I started that because of Junior. He was my idol like probably no other player has been. And for almost everyone around my age, I think it was about the same way.
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It wasn't just the fact that he was better than everyone else, though that helped a lot. For a kid, there's nothing cooler than a player who can do everything - he hit for average, he hit home runs, he hit in the clutch. He was a spectacular outfielder (I can't find numbers on this, but I'll hit anyone who tries to tell me he wasn't the best centerfielder ever). He could run. He did everything.

But beyond that there was the persona. He was just so damn cool. Before the injuries, when he was still The Kid, Junior had this ebullient air of awesomeness no matter what was going on. He seemed like he was happy to play baseball, and it never seemed like he even had to try that hard to be great and to look cool doing it. That's where the hat comes into play, I guess. He was totally effortless in all phases on the game, and seemingly outside the game as well. He was like an angel or an alien who had been sent here to show the children of the world what baseball was supposed to look like. He was the commercial king before Jeter, too. I found a couple of old ones:





Events conspired against Junior, though. Parts of his career kept getting taken from him by factors largely outside of his control. His early prime was largely robbed because of the players' strike in 1994, at least in terms of public recognition. After the strike people pretty much stopped watching baseball; it wasn't until the home run race in 1998 that baseball really came "back." But some of Junior's best seasons came during that period. Hell, he hit 40 home runs in 1994 and the season ended 50 games early. That's on pace for 58 home runs (which would have been a career high for him).

That wasn't the worst of it, though. You're probably already aware of Junior's injury history. After he asked to be traded to the Reds, he was riddled by major injuries (mostly to his legs) that robbed him of the meat of his prime years. He finished his career yesterday with 630 career home runs. Since I'm evidently a numbers junkie now, I decided to run a number-crunch on how many home runs Junior would have today in a just universe. This won't be exact, as I'm making a lot of stuff up, but I have to for this exercise, so we'll just have to deal with that. The relevant variables are as follows:

Games: 2671
HR: 630
Seasons: 22

To correct for days off and minor injuries over the course of a season, I'm going to assume 140 games a season (his average during his first stint in Seattle). His HR/G rate for his career was 0.236 (to three significant digits). So assuming 140 games a season for 22 years, Junior should have 727 home runs. And that's a conservative estimate, since I included the strike season and a 72 game season (he missed almost three months in 1995 after breaking his wrist while making a catch) in the games per season calculations, and I didn't correct for the terrible seasons Junior had recently. Even with those caveats, he could have outhomered Babe Ruth.

There was another way in which Junior's career is a bit tragic. He very clearly was one of the greatest players in the history of the game. He did this during the steroid era, when it's been basically assumed that every good hitter in baseball was cheating (mainly because we've discovered that most of them were). And yet there's never been even a hint of a suspicion that Ken Griffey, Jr. was a steroid user. All the evidence indicates otherwise, even. Junior has never even been rumored to have failed a steroid test. His career arc roughly followed that of a non-user: spectacular as a young man, improvement into the prime, a plateau, then a steady decline into middle age. His body did the same thing: thin as a kid, strengthened into his prime (but not enormous), and then as he aged he got kind of fat and got hurt a lot.

He wasn't a user, and to most that just means that his numbers will be obscured by those of the sluggers who did cheat. That's a fair assessment; the 56 home runs that Junior hit in 1998 would have been amazing most years, but that year it was good for third behind Mark McGwire's 70 and Sammy Sosa's 66. McGwire's admitted to using steroids that year, and while Sosa hasn't, it's pretty much assumed by most people that he was, whether that's fair or not. He had huge numbers, but they weren't as huge as those of Bonds and the others.

But what gets overlooked is the fact that most of the pitchers were probably using too. Not only was Junior competing against hitters who were juicing, but he was batting against pitchers who were unnaturally good as well. If we take steroids out of the game, the numbers would drop almost across the board, most likely. But it's quite likely that Griffey's would actually have risen.

This is all very depressing. To think that Ken Griffey, Jr. should probably be atop the all-time home run list rather than Barry Bonds, to think that as good as he was he should have been even better...that all isn't much fun. So today, let's not think about that.

I got to see Ken Griffey, Jr. play several times as a member of the Reds, but I also got to see him once as a Mariner. It was 1999, and I was in Seattle with my family for my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. All I cared about, though, was the fact that we were going to get to see Junior play. It was Ken Griffey, Jr. Hat Day, and when we walked in we all got these great hats, which my brothers and I immediately put on. What we didn't know at the time was that Junior was sick, and questionable for the game. He probably shouldn't have played, but it was his hat day, and he knew that there were going to be thousands of kids like my brothers and me who were there just to see him. So he played sick, and he made my childhood. Things like that are the things I'm going to remember about Junior.

So for today at least, let's not remember the injuries, or the years where Junior had to take a backseat to cheaters. Let's remember the diving catches. Let's remember the long flies. Let's remember the Home Run Derbies where he stood in the batter's box, hat turned back, and blasted baseballs deep into the night using nothing but a wood stick and his raw skill. Let's remember the video games we played as kids, and the heroes we had. Let's remember him as Junior. Let's remember him as the Kid. Today, let's remember Ken Griffey, Jr.'s career not as what it could or should have been, but as what it was: one of the greatest in the history of Major League Baseball.

Oliver "Sunk Cost" Perez

Oliver Perez is not very good. I fact, he sucks. He's been lifted from the starting rotation and is now being used basically as a mop-up reliever. Considering he's in the midst of a 3 year, $36 million contract, that's not the best situation. However, he is contractually able to decline a minor-league assignment to fix what's wrong with him, so he's just sucking in the majors.

I saw this today from SNY's Howard Megdal, and I think I agree. Perez just needs to go.
More stuffI don't want to just reprint Megdal's whole column, so I'll just share this.

The two comparisons in the minds of Mets fans are Steve Trachsel and Bobby Jones, of course. Jones, lost after three starts in 2000, went to Triple-A, and returned to pitch to a respectable 4.46 ERA. Trachsel, who pitched to an ERA over 8 to start 2001 in roughly the same number of innings that Perez has thrown in 2010, went to the Minors, returning about three weeks later to pitch to a sparkling 3.34 ERA for the remainder of the season.

Both Trachsel and Jones had more career Major League wins than Perez, and both were older, likely making the move that much harder to stomach. But both of them wanted to get better, and both of them, especially Trachsel, found additional success in their careers by doing so.

I don't get Perez's motivation for refusing the minor league assignment. Obviously, based on the cases Megdal cites, it's worked before in the Mets organization. He can't possibly be happy throwing only mop-up innings, unless he's even weirder than I think he is. And unless he's just dumb (which I don't think is the case), he can't possibly have not noticed the fact that he is terrible. He is not going to get the chance to work out his issues in the big leagues, which is one move of Jerry Manuel's with which I actually agree (and possibly the only one this year).

He's either going to be a bad long reliever for the next year and a half, go to the minors, or get cut. The former is an untenable situation. The second is a good stop-gap measure at the very least, and could have the potential to help both Oliver Perez and the Mets. But if he refuses that, the last resort should be to end the relationship. That money is gone, and keeping Perez won't get it back. If he is unwilling to do what it takes to get better, he should not be on this team.

This is awesome: Jose Reyes is a playa

I got this from Ted Berg, who is awesome.



It's New York Metropolitan hero Jose Reyes, alongside Miss USA Rima Fakih. Evidently she was on a visit to Citi Field last night. Here's another picture, because she's really attractive and wearing a Mets jersey.



Okay, carry on. That's really all I had.

Well, whaddaya know

The Mets are working on a team-wide streak of 27 scoreless innings. They shut out the Phillies for an entire series. There must not be a good sightline from the away bullpen to the plate. In honor of this great achievement, I give you the first official Thus Spoke Keith Hernandez Terrible MS Paint:



Wasn't that fun? I never would have expected that on a six-game homestand against the Yankees and the Phillies, the Mets would manage a 5-1 record. I guess all they had to do was get Maine and Perez out of the rotation.

The only problem with this is it means it's going to be a little longer before Jerry Manuel finally (finally!) gets fired. Maybe if Fernando Nieve's arm falls off (he's appeared in 27 out of 48 games, tying him for the league lead with teammate Pedro Feliciano) they'll can him. It would be nice if it didn't have to come to that, though.

Uniforms: Toronto Blue Jays

I'm on my way to go to my high school alma mater's regional track meet (let's go 4x8!), so this is going to be my last post of the day. Thanks to whoever's been reading today, and to whoever reads these in the future, pretending like they're new.

I am a uniform nut, for some reason. I have been known to look more favorably on a team whose uniforms I like. That's weird. But I can't help it.

Let's take the Toronto Blue Jays as an example. Their uniforms right now are really, really bad. Here's what they look like:



See? They're terrible. That was the best picture I could find, because nobody wants to see them. Most of the pictures show the "old-school" uniforms, like from the early 1990s. Those look like this:



See how awesome that looks? The hat is the best part. I actually own one of them, and I'm not a Blue Jays fan at all. It just looks cool. And they're effective -- back when those were Toronto's primary uniforms, they were actually good at baseball. They won the 1992 and 1993 World Series.



See how happy Joe Carter is? It's not because he just hit a World Series-winning home run. It's because he looked good doing it. Ditch the black-and-silver crap, Jays.

Some fans are really dumb

MLB All-Star voting has started. Well, it started a while ago, but they made the first announcement of who's winning. There are some surprises. Not the good kind, either. I'm going to go through some of my favorites.
More stuff
4. Mark Teixeira, 1st in AL 1B

This one is kind of excusable, what with the whole "being on the Yankees" and "usually being really good" thing. But right now, he's not good. He has a 0.2 WAR (wins over replacement), which sucks. Also a .210 BA and a .370 slugging percentage, which also suck. 7 HR and 30 RBI is kind of good, but not really.

You know who's way more awesome? KEVIN YOUKILIS. This is not just me being a Red Sox fan, he's legitimately better this year. He has a .311/.457/.602 slash line, which is good. 10 HR and 29 RBI is roughly the same as Teixeira. And Youkilis has a 2.5 WAR, which is pretty good, and way better than Tex.

So yeah, Yankee fans are lame (sorry, Yankee fans).

3. Placido Polanco, 1st in NL 3B

Polanco isn't bad, as much as it hurts me to say that. But there's a player outperforming him at his position, and Polanco is not a superstar player, so there's no legitimate excuse for him leading the third base voting (the Phillies being good is a terrible reason to vote a player onto an All-Star team).

Have you ever heard of Casey McGehee? He's the third baseman for the (admittedly not very good) Brewers. I'm going to pick some good stats and some popular stats by which to compare them.

Popular...
BA: Polanco .311, McGehee .306
HR: Polanco 5, McGehee 9
RBI: Polanco 21, McGehee 40
Good...
wOBA: Polanco .352, McGehee .390
wRC+: Polanco 115, McGehee 144
WAR: Polanco 1.4, McGehee 1.3

So yeah, McGehee's better, for the most part, except for BA and WAR (where I'd say there's a negligible difference).

2. Jimmy Rollins, 1st in NL SS

Jimmy Rollins is an ass, but his slash line right now is .341/.462/.634 so I guess I should give him a break.

What's that? He's played 12 of 45 games this year (that's 33 games missed, for the lazy)? Ike Davis has played more, and he's only been in the major leagues for a month. This is stupid. Hanley Ramirez is in second place, and honestly, even if Rollins had played a full season, it's likely Ramirez would deserve the starting spot more (unless you're voting only based on hustle, in which case you probably already voted for David Eckstein even though he's terrible).

Hanley Ramirez is really good at baseball.

1. Pat Burrell, 4th in AL DH

I don't know who is voting for Pat Burrell. I have one friend who is a Rays fan, and he hates Pat Burrell. He only refers to him as a bum. Thus, I'm assuming it wasn't Rays fans voting for him. Based on his statistics, it also can't be "people who have been watching baseball this year." He has a .202/.292/.333 slash line and a .284 wOBA, which is horrible. Scott Podsednik's BA is higher than Burrell's OBP, and Scott Podsednik isn't good. Burrell is so worthless that the Rays cut him, and he hasn't been signed by another team. Yeah, he had more votes than David Ortiz, and he's not even on a baseball team. I almost hope he wins, just to see what happens. I hope he'd wear a blank jersey, like Sammy Sosa in Hardball.

This is all great evidence for why fans shouldn't be voting for the All-Star teams, if they're going to be deciding home-field in the World Series. Because we vote for stupid players.