Category Archives: Baseball

Ridiculous Albert Pujols rumor produces decent quotes about and from Albert Pujols

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So I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but Buster Olney reported on ESPN.com that the Phillies had internal discussions about trading for Albert Pujols.

Of course they did. No sarcasm. I bet every team has had internal discussions about trading for Albert Pujols at some point or another. They probably go something like this:

“Wouldn’t it be cool if we could trade for Albert Pujols?”

Then they end, because they’re unfeasible and because wishcasting will get you nowhere in a Major League front office.

If Pujols did somehow end up on the Phillies in a massively lopsided swap for Ryan Howard, I’d leave the country. No sarcasm there, either.

True story: When my fiance (now wife) was applying to medical school, I was happy to move to anyplace she wanted to go, with only two rules. 1) There had to be a Major League team there. 2) Not Philadelphia.

If Pujols wound up with the Phillies, punishing the Mets some 19 times a year, I’m out. That’s just too much to bear. I can go blog about baseball in Japan or Mexico or Australia or the Netherlands.

Anyway, the rumor seems to have really riled up the Phillies and Cardinals, and produced a couple of telling quotes about and from Albert Pujols:

“I see Albert today and he’s exactly like he always is.” – Tony La Russa.

That sounds about right. Albert Pujols strode into Cardinals’ camp that morning exactly like he always is: completely and utterly awesome. I imagine he showed up prepared to hit about .330 with an OBP around .430 and a .650 slugging while playing excellent defense. You know, “exactly like he always is.”

“There’s people, stupid, that like to write something when it’s not the truth.” – Albert Pujols.

I believe, Buster Olney, that Albert Pujols just called you stupid. That… sucks. One time Willie Randolph yelled at me, but I’m really glad I’ve never had one of the top 10 hitters in the history of baseball call me stupid.

That might make me leave the country, too.

Something to make Mets fans feel better

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James Kannengieser reacted to some news out of San Francisco that outfielder Fred Lewis could get cut by the Giants with a nice post to Amazin’ Avenue about how Lewis would be a nice upgrade in the Mets’ outfield.

It’s true, and I agree with James, so read his post.

But since I couldn’t figure out why the Giants would cut a player like Lewis, I figured I’d catch up with official TedQuarters San Francisco insider Dailey McDailey for more insight.

Or maybe I just opted to publish a partial transcript of our online discussion. Here it is:

TedQuarters: Word is the Giants are going to straight-up cut Fred Lewis.

Dailey McDailey Honestly, I’d rather he be on a team that would let him play. Bruce Bochy will never give him a chance.

TQ: Bochy doesn’t like him?

DM: Bochy only likes old catchers.

TQ: That makes sense. But aren’t they going to carry like six people significantly worse than Fred Lewis?

DM: More like 10. He was No. 2 on the team in OBP last year. But Andres Torres is a “real” lead off hitter. Eugenio Velez had three good weeks. But he can’t play defense either, because he’s a second baseman. I hate my team. I’d like to [deleted for decency] Brian Sabean, [deleted for decency].

TQ: So their plan to upgrade their offense was to part ways with the guy who was second on the team in OBP last year?

DM: Then [deleted for decency] Bochy’s face. Nobody in the Giants front office knows what OBP is. They know batting average, which doesn’t apply to Molina, because he’s clutch.

TQ: Makes sense.

DM: It’s a team run by old sportswriters, and it makes me want to die.

TQ: It makes me feel better about the Mets, if that means anything to you.

DM: It doesn’t. The Mets have won a world series in your lifetime.

TQ: Yeah, but I only barely remember it.

DM: I remember losing to the trashy team from across the bay because a [expletive] earthquake leveled the city, and then losing to the trashy team from down the state because our manager wouldn’t let our best pitcher go in Game 7. Then I remember pissing away the prime of the best player ever. Then I remember pissing away the prime of the best pitching combination to come up together since Koufax and Drysdale.

TQ: Life is good, huh?

DM: We had one owner retire and another die, and Sabean still survives. WHO IS BACKING HIM? I WANT ANSWERS!

TQ: Can I publish portions of this conversation, tastefully deleting but alluding to the parts where you say what you’d do to Sabean and Bochy?

DM: You can publish every word if you want.

Have you even seen my beautiful head of hair, Jerry Thornton of WEEI.com?

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Stuff like this makes my head hurt.

I hate even linking to it because I hate sending even a tiny bit of traffic in that direction, but I feel like this jackass needs to be called out just for his utter lack of originality. Seriously? We’re still asserting that people who employ certain metrics to evaluate baseball players are virgins and Star Wars fans?

Also, I invite any Red Sox fan frustrated with Theo Epstein’s allegiance to sabermetrics to come join me in following the Mets for a season. Don’t worry, you’ll never have the same concerns here. And I promise you, Jerry Thornton, by September you’ll go running back to Boston to immediately open up a spreadsheet and start calculating the breadth of Epstein’s geeky awesomeness.

And for the millionth time, just about every damn team in the league uses one stat or another to evaluate players, and so does every writer. Don’t tell me you’re not going to check out some dude’s RBI and batting average when you’re writing some dumb column about why he is or isn’t the MVP come August, Jerry Thornton. So because some people choose to measure players by stats that more accurately assess those players’ value to their teams, we should be dubbed “mouth-breathing, grease-stained Gollums”?

I was a Teenage Stats Geek, too, Jerry Thornton. I was also the captain and MVP of the football team. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Sabermetric stats are not a lifestyle choice. They’re just tools. Not something far-fetched, not something unreasonable, just tools. Tools some people use to better understand and enjoy baseball games. Tools some baseball executives use to better understand their industry.

Tools like Jerry Thornton.

Here’s the really clever part of the column:

So as a public service to all like-minded fans, concerned Red Sox citizens worried about the direction the Nation is headed, I’d like to put my ex-Stat Geek skills to us and offer my own formula for judging all statisticians. Let’s call it the NSGR/MMUSRI (Nerdy Stat Geek Ridiculous/Meaningless Made Up Statistic Rating Index). You take any new, obscure baseball evaluation stat and you start with the weight of the guy who invented it, times how many days he’s been wearing the same “Han Solo Shot First” T-shirt, divided by how many times he’s had sex in his life, multiplied by how often his mom cooks his meals add how many days a month he sees the sun times the percentage by which he throws like a girl.

BURN! Take that, Tom Tango. Maybe if you give up on your pesky allegiance to stats, you can move out of your mom’s basement and become surrounded with women like Jerry Thornton always is.

Brewers get lame

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Man, so much of this “respect the other team” stuff bubbling up the last couple of days. I guess it’s that time of the Spring. Jon Heyman:

The Milwaukee Brewers are a young team, but they are growing up fast. They recognize that they are new school and not old school, but that they must go to school to avoid the mistakes of a year ago, when their youthful exuberance alienated their opponents.They will adapt. They will temper things. They will not pull out their shirttails after walk-off wins.

At least that’s the goal after a season of inventive celebrations earned them a fair amount of animosity.

I don’t know how anyone could call the Prince Fielder cannonball celebration a mistake. If that was a mistake, I don’t want to be right about anything ever. That was completely awesome.

So Barry Zito retaliated and nailed Prince with one of his blazing 82 mile-an-hour fastballs this Spring. Ooooh, respect the game, Prince Fielder.

You know how you respect the game? Playing as hard as you can to win, which I’m pretty sure Fielder does. That’s all. Showmanship is different from disrespect.

Hold on one second

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Look: I do not aim to make light of the sexual assault accusations against Ben Roethlisberger. But something in the story caught my eye:

A 20-year-old student in the college town of Milledgeville, Ga., told a police officer that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger sexually assaulted her.

Hold on one second: Milledgeville? How is this the first time I’ve heard of this town? What a shame it should come up in these circumstances.

Watch out, world: Bengie Molina plays hardball

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The Internet is atwitter with this report from Jesse Spector in the Daily News, in which Bengie Molina weighs in on what he feels happened between him and the Mets this offseason. Check it out:

“Right from the beginning, I told them, I said, ‘Hey, listen. You’re gonna have to give me two years at least, because that’s the only way I’m going over there.'”

Oooh, look out, world: Bengie Molina plays hardball. Unless you’re willing to commit more than one year to him, at 35, he’s just going to continue getting on base at a sub-.300 clip, being the worst baserunner in baseball, and impressing coaching staffs with nebulous leadership and staff-handling abilities in San Francisco, where he’s comfortable.

What’s hilarious about the article is that Molina accuses the Mets of not really being interested in him, and only pretending to have interest to show fans they were pursuing big-name free-agents like Bengie Molina. Molina doesn’t even consider the possibility that the Mets might have been smart enough to not want to sign a 35-year-old catcher who isn’t all that good to a two-year, multi-million dollar contract.

Just like, you know, all the other teams in the Majors that weren’t willing to meet Bengie Molina’s two-year contract demand. Namely all of them.

Since Molina, in the article, exposes himself as something of a jackass, I’m even happier that the Mets didn’t extend him that two-year contract offer. Plus, though Molina’s a better player than Rod Barajas, the Mets got Barajas at such a massively discounted rate — especially compared to the one it would have taken to land Molina — that the ultimate outcome was a decent one.

What’s funny, to me, is that the Giants’ biggest offseason need clearly should have been adding an offensive weapon. They posted a team OPS+ of 81 last year, falling just below Omir Santos’ 82.

They have, in catching prospect Buster Posey, an offensive weapon that appears nearly ready for prime time. Posey did spend most of 2009 in High-A ball, but hit .321 with a .391 on-base percentage and a .511 slugging in 151 plate appearances in Triple-A.

The fifth-overall pick in the 2008 draft and Baseball America’s No. 7 overall prospect might have represented the Giants’ best opportunity to improve their offense, but instead, they’ll again start the season with Molina behind the plate.

So though the Giants may have gotten Molina at a reasonable price, he might not actually improve their team much over the in-house alternative. He would have improved the Mets at that price, but likely wouldn’t have been a good deal at the price he was demanding of the Mets.

Keanu Reeves completely owned by Tone Loc, Darryl Strawberry in the name of Sammy Hagar

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YouTube is incredible. I found this video today, from the 1990 MTV Rock N’ Jock softball game. It features Bud Bundy, for one thing, plus Keanu Reeves back when he was just “Keanu Reeves, from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”

We don’t see it, but we’re told that Tone Loc picks off Reeves at first base. But earlier in the video, we see Tone Loc playing catcher, so I can only assume that Tone Loc picked off Keanu Reeves by throwing behind the runner at first, a very aggressive move for any backstop, no less one playing in a celebrity softball game.

So good for Tone Loc for further confirming his own awesomeness. I’m sure manager Sammy Hagar was proud.

The highlight of the clip comes when Darryl Strawberry rips an inside-the-park home run past a diving Reeves, who took a downright terrible route to the ball.

Just trust the Daily News on this one, blood-spinning treatment is controversial

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I read the print edition Daily News every day on my commute into Manhattan. I realize, of course, that I could get all of it online on my iPhone, but I like the effect of seeing the front and back pages, plus I don’t think reading on such a tiny screen is good for my eyes or back.

Anyway, with all the Tony Galea stuff going on that vaguely involves Jose Reyes, Alex Rodriguez, Tiger Woods and now Carlos Beltran, something keeps jumping out at me: The Daily News consistently refers to the platelet-rich plasma therapy that Reyes underwent in June as “controversial,” but it never explains why the treatment is controversial, and I don’t remember it being controversial in the summer.

And it’s always in news stories, too. Actually, the columnists who have mentioned the story — Mike Lupica and Hank Gola — have avoided the term “controversial” when discussing blood-spinning, but just about every reporter mentioning the therapy has not. Check it out:

Michael O’Keefe: “controversial but legal therapy known as ‘blood spinning.’”

O’Keeffe and Teri Thompson: “a controversial technique called platelet-rich plasma injection therapy, also known as ‘blood spinning.’”

Thompson and Adam Rubin: “the controversial ‘blood-spinning’ or plasma-replacement therapy”

Thompson, O’Keeffe, Mark Feinsand and David Saltonstall: “the controversial – but legal – therapy known as ‘blood-spinning.’”

Thompson, O’Keeffe, Nathaniel Vinton and Christian Red: “a controversial blood-spinning treatment.”

I could continue. In all, platelet-rich plasma therapy has, by my count, been noted as controversial 13 times in the Daily News without any mention of the nature of the controversy surrounding the method.

And then there’s this, from a Gola column in December:

“It’s well-established in the sports medicine community to do this,” [Dr. Lewis] Maharam said. “The Steelers’ team physicians have done it with Hines Ward. The team physicians for the Giants have done it. I’ve done it on my patients. People at NYU have done it. It’s all over the country. I call it almost a magic bullet in sports medicine equivalent to when we first got MRI.”

So even though Maharam, the Daily News‘ sports-medicine expert on call, doesn’t note anything controversial about the treatment, the treatment can’t be noted in terms of Woods, A-Rod, Reyes or Beltran without mention of the massive, mysterious controversy surrounding it?

I’m confused. Certainly it’s bad if Galea was distributing HGH and other performance-enhancing drugs, because that’s illegal. And it’s bad if he was practicing medicine without a license, as he allegedly was in Florida, when he performed the platelet-rich plasma therapy on Woods.

And I’ll allow that it’s a little weird that all these guys had to go to Canada to get this treatment, which sounds, from all the reading I’ve done, like a relatively simple procedure.

But this New York Times article from last February makes it sound like the only potential controversy surrounding the treatment is whether or not it works.

And the treatment was not controversial even by the Daily News’ standard in September, when Sean Avery had the treatment, nor a couple of weeks before that when Katie Charles wrote a feature on the subject.

And platelet-rich plasma therapy did not seem controversial in any of the nine times it was mentioned in the Daily News before that, including when Reyes underwent the treatment in June.

Maybe I’m missing something, or I entirely missed something, or the Daily News neglected to cover some story that exposed to the world how blood-spinning therapy is a giant hoax or a stealthy way to inject patients with mind-control drugs or something. The only vaguely fishy thing I can dig up on it is that Brits call it “Dracula Therapy.” (Ed. Note: DRACULA THERAPY!)

Either way, since none of the 13 stories mention why exactly the treatment is controversial, since the treatment was apparently not controversial until it involved a slew of favorite N.Y. media whipping boys, and since several of the reports specify that the treatment is “legal” or “not illegal” — implying that its legality should be even in question — it strikes me that more than just blood is being spun.

Dan O’Dowd: Still cool

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Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA system projects the Colorado Rockies to win the National League West in 2010 despite a quiet offseason in which the team’s biggest acquisition was part-time catcher Miguel Olivo.

Still, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise: The Rockies will return nearly the exact same team that won 92 games and the Wild Card in 2009.

There’s no doubt that it took their GM, Dan O’Dowd, a while to settle on the formula for success in Colorado. The early parts of his tenure were marked by mostly bottom-dwelling teams and, in Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle, a couple of awful, awful free-agent acquisitions.

But in his 10 years at the Rockies’ helm, O’Dowd has apparently learned a thing or two about how to construct a team to face the unique challenges presented by playing home games at altitude in a not-huge market, quietly assembling a staff of groundball pitchers and building a deep roster full of (mostly) homegrown young athletes.

I like O’Dowd because I feel like his work flies under the radar when the league’s best GMs are discussed, maybe because of how long it took him to get his team out of the cellar, maybe because of the Rockies’ simple geographic isolation. And I think it’s nice to be reminded that some front-office types, given enough time, can demonstrate the ability to learn from their mistakes, and to determine the appropriate approach to overcome the hurdles facing their franchises.

I reiterated my mancrush on O’Dowd on the Rockiescast with my old college friends, Scott and Ted, on Friday evening, then helped them preview the NL West a bit. Even if you’ve only got a passing interest in the Rockies or that division, it should make for a mildly entertaining half hour.