Extraneous Thoughts On The Draft

Some leftover opinions on the draft that I didn't want to bury at the bottom of the Culver post:

• Wow, those five minute intervals were way, way too long. I understand that the whole reason for putting this thing in prime time was to make money off of it and the longer you stretch it out, the more commercials you can sell. But if you pace it too slow, no one is going to be around to watch those ads. I DVR'd this joint and I tried to watch it at regular speed at first, but ended up fast-forwarding between the breaks and ultimately just turning it off until the Yankees were up.
  
  
• Mysteriously, every fucking team took their allotted five minutes, right down to the second. Yes, that probably made the broadcast flow much smoother since the hosts knew right when to kick it back to Bud Selig. However, in other sports, they might need to use that time since they can trade away their pick, and if the team is ready with the selection, they just go sooner and save everyone the time.
  
  
• After the first round was said and done, I somehow despised Bud Selig even more than I did at the beginning. I hated the fact that he had to go through the same protracted spiel before every pick:

  With the seventeenth pick in the Two Thousand and Ten (that's M-M-X in Roman numerals) Major League Baseball First Year Players Draft, the Tampa Bay Rays of Tampa, Florida select Josh Sale, and outfielder from Seattle High School In Seattle, Washington, down the street from the Mobil station on the right, about a block and a half west of the hospital.
  
  The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have the next pick in the 2010 Major League Baseball First Year Players Draft and will have five minutes, which translates to 300 seconds, and are on the clock - metaphorically speaking, not literally on top of a clock - starting now.

  AAAAAAAHHHHHH! We know what draft we are watching and don't care what town the college or high school the kid goes to is in. I hate hearing you speak. Less is more. Shut the fuck up.
  
  
• Judging by his suit, if Selig wasn't announcing the picks last night, he might have been trying to sell you a 2002 Nissan Maxima with 140,000 miles on it. "All highway. You can drive one of these to 250,000, easy!"
  
  
• By the time they got to the supplemental round, the pacing was much better and it was far more interesting, even though the players were ostensibly less heralded. Even the guys at the desk thought it was better and said so on air (oops!). This thing didn't need to be drawn out for three and a half hours and by pick number #35 or so, it was painfully obvious.
  
  
• It was also pretty cool to see the team's representative announce the pick (and mispronounce the name) during the supplemental round. Jeff Bagwell got stuck with "Mike Kvasnicka" and Roberto Alomar had to try to say "Noah Syndergaard" and "Asher Wojciechowski". As someone with a last name that everyone butchers, I found that amusing.

That's all I got. If they don't ditch the contrived intervals and cut this thing down to about an hour and a half next year, I promise I won't turn it on until the Yanks are on the clock.

Off Night Viewing

The baseball season is just five nights old and already the Yankees have their second off night of the year. Such is life early in the season. If you're looking for baseball action tonight, the Mets have the Fish at 7:10, and MLBN will be carrying the Cubs at the Braves at the same time. Witness the wonder that is Heyward!

In other sports, the NHL regular season is winding down. The Islanders, long eliminated from the playoff hunt, play the Penguins in the final regular season game at Pittsburgh's Igloo. The Devils are at the Panthers, and the Sabres visit the Bruins in a game that has major implications for the Rangers slim remaining hopes of making the playoffs.

On the college side, the Frozen Four drops the puck tonight from Ford Field in Detroit. The unseasonably warm weather and high humidity may make for some interesting ice conditions on the makeshift rink at the football stadium. Interestingly enough, it's the same rink that was used at Fenway earlier this year for the NHL's Winter Classic and Hockey East's Frozen Fenway.

Both games will be on ESPN2. Cinderella RIT, with Connecticut native and big time Whaler fan Jared DeMichiel between the pipes, takes on mighty Wisconsin in the 5:30 game. In the 8:30 night cap, top overall seed Miami (of Ohio, not Florida) takes on Boston College.

Miami lost the National Championship Game in heartbreaking fashion last year, squandering a two goal lead to evil BU in the game's final minute before losing in OT. BC bounced the RedHawks from the tourney in each of the three previous years. Earlier this season, Miami student manager Brendan Burke, son of Toronto Maple Leafs (and former Whalers) G.M. Brian Burke died in a car crash. There are a lot of reasons to be pulling for Miami in this game, but you all know where my loyalties lie.

Whatever your choice for tonight, enjoy it. We'll be back with more baseball in the morning.

I Know That Face: McGwire, A-Rod and Posnanski

I didn't really want to talk about this subject, but for some odd reason, I've been thinking a lot about Mark McGwire over the past two days. The reason of course is obvious, but it's odd because I've never really cared much about McGwire before Monday. When you say "baseball" and "1998" the first thing that comes to mind is the unstoppable version of the Yankees that won 114 games and the World Series. I never really cared that Big Mac took steroids, but I still consider the single season home run record to be 61 (although Maris' 1961 campaign obviously comes with its own set of caveats). Basically, I was fairly indifferent about the guy and still am about steroid use in general.

But then I read the part of his statement where he said "wished he never played during the steroid era" and quickly realized this wasn't going to be an actual apology. Then I watched the interview with Bob Costas on Monday night and listened to McGwire refuse to acknowledge that there might be some connection between him taking steroids and hitting lots of home runs and I grew more disenchanted. My first mistake was expecting a real apology in the first place. My second mistake was watching the interview.

At that point I was ensnared in the story. I read reaction after reaction yesterday, some echoing the disapproval Tom Verducci and Ken Rosenthal showed on the MLB Network after the interview and some questioning why McGwire's apology wasn't good enough for us. Even those who claimed not to care were adamant in their apathy.

While no one was particularly surprised by McGwire's admission, the story still got huge and reached a point of ridiculous oversaturation. Basically everyone with a voice in the baseball media offered their opinion and there were responses to the interview and also retorts to those responses.

Well, here I am with a rebuttal to a retort to the responses. When you are a media bottom feeder like myself and you wait 36 hours to give your opinion on a story like this, all that's left is the backwash of the backlash. So here goes nothing...

If you don't read Joe Posnanski's blog, you are truly missing out. If there was a sports writers draft tomorrow, he would be snatched up with the first pick. He weaves together disparate topics with ease and makes seemingly uninteresting things worth reading about. His posts are long and nuanced and are meant to be read in full, but I'm going to blockquote him here (and take him out of context) to make a point.

From his reaction to the McGwire interview (or more accurately, his reaction to other's reactions):

I didn't agree with or even follow everything McGwire said, but I never thought that was the point. I never thought apologizing was an Olympic sport with stoned-faced people judging how straight his toes were pointed and if he made too big a splash. McGwire is not a public speaker. He's not a philosopher. He's not a politician. He is not even an especially open person. He is a guy who dedicated his life to hitting baseballs hard. Expecting him to become Hamlet doesn't seem fair.

This is a valid viewpoint. I happen to disagree, but two people can watch the same lengthy interview and come away with completely different perceptions of what just took place. There's a lot of wiggle room in 54 minutes of two-way conversation.

But look at Posnanski's reaction to A-Rod's interview with Peter Gammons last year:

I thought Alex Rodriguez’s ”apology“ was one of the most absurd shams of recent memory. I thought it was so pathetic that, for the first time, that ”A-Fraud“ moniker finally made some sense to me. As a baseball fan, I wasn’t mad at A-Rod when the steroid story broke. As a baseball fan, I was furious at A-Rod when he and his handlers put together this infomercial apology.

To me that sounds like Joe judging A-Rod's apology, something that "wasn't the point" when it was McGwire's turn in the hot seat. Again, there is a lot of room for interpretation and there are significant differences between the two situations and subsequent interviews (namely the interviewer), but it's hard to reconcile those two statements.

Both of these guys had handlers and given the attention that they were bound to garner by admitting to using steroids, they should have. The biggest difference was that McGwire's team had a month to orchestrate his PR offensive while A-Rod found out that he was going to have to face the music three days prior while he was running on a treadmill and confronted by Selena Roberts.

Poz goes on to suggest (about A-Rod):

That this is a PR campaign ordered up by a very rich man who got caught and the only goal was to admit as little as humanly possible and make excuses for the little he does admit.

McGwire didn't get caught, but the only reason that he's admitting this now is that he wants to be the hitting coach for the Cardinals and he knows he has to pay his pound of flesh to the media and get this out of the way now. But his PR campaign was far more calculated than A-Rod's was and similarly unbelievable.

If you're Mark McGwire, you don't pay the big bucks to a "crisis-communications company" to tell the whole truth. You hire them to conveniently confine your steroid usage to the smallest believable window, and claim you used them only to recover from injuries. You flatly deny Jose Canseco's account because he still doesn't have any real credibility despite the fact that most of the stuff he said was true. You say that you only used steroids in "very, very low dosage". You don't acknowledge that they might have made you a superhuman home run machine, because that would be cheating, you see? You just took them to get back to where you were. Heck, talk about the "backspin" you put on the ball and act like you unlocked some key to hitting. You're going to be a hitting coach after all!

When you hire a crisis-communications company, they feed you lines like "walking M*A*S*H unit" that you repeat over and over again. They find a way to spin your bungled appearance in front of congress in 2005 so it looks like it wasn't your fault. They make sure you don't incriminate your former coach and future boss by saying he had knowledge of your steroid use. They remind you to say that you "wish you never played in the steroid era". Because like A-Rod being naive and trying to live up to the expectations of a giant contract in Texas, you were a victim of circumstance - an injury-plagued slugger who just happened to play in the steroid era.

I don't like being lied to. I don't appreciate the fact that, not only does Mark McGwire think that he was a better home run hitter than Babe Ruth because of his "God-given ability", but that he is also smarter than everyone else and thinks he can pass off a partial admission because he hired a company to calculate exactly how much he had to admit.

The problem is that a story gets this big, and the mainstream media reaction becomes the villian. Everyone needs a take and no one wants to hear you repeat what Tom Verducci said 10 seconds after the interview concluded.

The one common thread between Posnanski's take on McGwire and A-Rod is that he says that he's shocked that he disagrees with everyone's else's reaction in both. I don't find that surprising at all. I think the best writers make a living on the opposite end of the spectrum (our pal Craig Calcaterra comes to mind). Not to say that they don't believe their own opinions, but the guys I most enjoy reading typically come down diametrically opposed to the majority reaction when a story like this breaks. They are good at finding something about conventional wisdom to disagree with and that makes their opinion interesting to read.

Well this time, I think the original consensus was right. I think McGwire's "admission" was, in many ways, just as bad as A-Rod's. I'm not willing to believe that he really took steroids just to get healthy and I think deep down he knows that they made him better.

If you grant that the truth lies between what Jose Canseco said and what McGwire did, well McGwire's lying because he said there was "absolutely no truth to that whatsoever". And what good is an apology if you're not going to tell the truth? Besides, I wasn't asking for an apology anyway. McGwire did this for himself. Which shouldn't be a surprise, because if he was doing it for everyone else, it would have happened years ago.

Cone Done Gone?

(Unflattering screengrab via The Sports Hernia)

Good morning Fackers. Over the weekend, Bob Klapisch of the Bergen Record passed along a rather pessimistic update concerning David Cone's tenure as an analyst for the YES Network:

It appears Cone’s short but brilliant run in the YES broadcast booth may be over. Sources say Cone is out after a heated disagreement with network executives.

A spokesman confirmed via e-mail: “David’s contract is up. We’d love to have him back, but he’s in the process of evaluating his various options. … He may not be back based on what he decides.”

Cone’s skill and confidence grew appreciably in the past year. Like former-Met teammate Ron Darling, he had a graceful way of explaining baseball to casual fans, but also was immersed in cutting edge sabermetrics.

Michael Kay said, “I’d come into the booth five hours before a game and Coney would already be there, buried in the computer, looking up stats.”

Kay then added, "Ha. Stats..."

Of course, this isn't the first time a disagreement between Cone and the Yankees has prevented him from doing broadcasting work. He was a part of the YES Network when it first launched in 2002. However, when he attempted a comeback with the 2003 Mets instead of the Yanks, George Steinbrenner told him that he would not be welcome back with the organization. (Cone's 2003 lasted all of 18 innings and included 13 ER, so The Boss probably should have thanked him). Eventually a truce was reached and Cone replaced Joe Girardi when he made the jump from the press box to the dugout.

When Cone first reappeared on air back in 2008, I didn't really like his work. He doesn't have a great broadcasting voice and anytime there is a new person in the booth, it takes some time to appreciate their insights. However, I wholeheartedly agree with Klapisch's assertion that Cone was better this year.

Cone both cited advanced statistics and let his personality shine though in 2009. He frequently referenced FanGraphs.com (which most certainly endeared him to statistically-minded Yankees fans), spoke of his secondary education (which supposedly took place at an Irish Bar on the Lower East Side) and gave out his phone number on air.

If Cone does leave YES, odds are he'll end up at the MLB Network or ESPN. However, the most likely position for him there would be a studio analyst. If Cone wants to be in the booth, YES might still be his best option. For those who have come to appreciate the presence of the former hurler during Yanks games (including Matt and myself), there's still some hope that he could return for 2010. From what he's said on-air, it's clear that he loves New York and in talking to other fans, it seems like New York would love to have him back. Let's hope it all works out.

Christmas Day Viewing

Just a heads up, Ken Burns' Baseball is on the MLB Network today. It started at 6:00 this morning and runs until tomorrow at 5:30AM.

It was our intention to pursue the game — and its memories and myths — across the expanse of American history. We quickly developed an abiding conviction that the game of baseball offered a unique prism through which one could see refracted much more than the history of games won and lost, teams rising and falling, rookies arriving and veterans saying farewell. The story of baseball is also the story of race in America, of immigration and assimilation; of the struggle between labor and management, of popular culture and advertising, of myth and the nature of heroes, villains, and buffoons; of the role of women and class and wealth in our society. The game is a repository of age-old American verities, of standards against which we continually measure ourselves, and yet at the same time a mirror of the present moment in our modern culture — including all of our most contemporary failings.

But we were hardly prepared for the complex emotions the game summoned up. The accumulated stories and biographies, life-lessons and tragedies, dramatic moments and classic confrontations that we encountered daily began to suggest even more compelling themes. As Jacques Barzun has written, "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball."

My plan: turn it on and hide the remote. Sure beats watching A Christmas Story over and over again.

Best Of Luck Peter Gammons

As we mentioned very briefly yesterday, Peter Gammons has announced that after more than twenty years he's leaving ESPN at the conclusion of the Winter Meetings. Shortly after the initial announcement, the predictable news broke that Gammons will be joining both MLBN and NESN.

First off, I have great respect and admiration for Peter Gammons. Many Yankee fans loathe the man for what they perceive to be blatant pro-Red Sox bias. Frankly, I don't see it. I find it akin to the anti-Yankee bias many find with Joe Buck or other on the national stage. Are we that accustomed to John Sterling, Suzyn Waldman, and Michael Kay blowing sunshine up our ass that we can't stomach anything that's not definitively pro-Yankee?

Regardless, this isn't about other baseball journalists. I find Peter Gammons to be exceedingly genuine, and I think he's one of the best, if not the best ambassador the game has. Yes, I do find him to be somewhat Red Sox centric, but I don't consider it a bias, and I don't think it negatively impacts his work. Part of what appeals to me about Peter Gammons as a baseball analyst is that I find him to be genuine. That he's a fan of the game and someone who truly cares about baseball at large is evident in his work. Much of that is because in many ways Peter Gammons is still the kid he was growing up in Massachusetts as a big Red Sox fan. Even as a national baseball journalist, that's still part of who he is. And I wouldn't have it any other way. I'll take Gammons' slight bias as part of his character anyday - far better than the wooden delivery of Ken Rosenthal, the smarmy-ness of Jon Heyman, or even the smooth professionalism of guys like Tom Verducci and Buster Olney, who I actually like. Gammons is a fan who was fortunate enough to become one of the top journalists in the game. Isn't that what so many fans dream of doing?

Whatever your feelings on Gammons, this is a huge gain for MLBN. Let's face it, ESPN is becoming an absolute joke. It's about who's "now" or "next", or having an LA studio so Snoop or the Jonas Brothers can narrate the Top Ten each night. With Gammons gone now, Olney is the only baseball TV personality there I repsect. Most baseball fans have spent the past year raving about how good MLBN is, especially in comparison to ESPN and Baseball Tonight. This only further solidifies that position. ESPN is shifting more and more towards entertainment; MLBN is legitimate baseball analysis.

Yes MLBN has an advantage as a single sport network, and yes MLBN is not without their share of on-air morons, but I'll take MLBN over BBTN any day. In grabbing the likes of Costas, Verducci, even Rosenthal, and now Gammons, MLBN is truly making a mark for themselves.

Best of luck to Peter Gammons in his new endeavors. I certainly look forward to seeing him as part of the MLBN.

Arizona Fall League Rising Stars Showcase Tonight

For those of you who aren't ready to let go of baseball season just yet, MLB Network has some methadone to ease your jones tonight. The Arizona Fall League Rising Stars Showcase will be on MLBN at 8 PM EST tonight.

All 30 clubs will be represented, with Michael Dunn being the lone Yankee representative on the West team. Former Yankee outfielder Gary Ward is on the coaching staff for the West team as well; former Yankee prospect Jose Tabata is on the East roster. Stephen Strasburg was scheduled to start for the East, but has been scratched with a pulled muscle in his neck.

Mitch Williams Is An Idiot

You probably knew that already anyway. If you don't recall as such from his playing days, perhaps you've listened to him trip over his own tongue repeatedly on the MLB Network this year. If not, simply refer to the picture below.

"I cut the sleeves off because it looks awesome, now get your head in the game!"

Last night, after finishing the recap, I checked a few other Yankee sites and had MLBN on in the background. I was only half listening. I noticed that recently DFA'd former Yankee and all-around good guy Tony Clark had joined the studio team - good for him. Combined with Sean Casey, last night's panel had two of the most well-liked Big Leaguers of the past twenty years or so.

But for all the goodwill that The Mayor and Tony the former Tiger can generate, one meandering argument from The Wild Thing ruined it all for me.

I'm not even quite sure what point Williams was trying to make. Maybe that's because I wasn't dedicating my full attention, or maybe it's because Williams hasn't made a lucid argument in his entire time with the fledgling network.

Regardless, the conversation started with the increasingly tiresome AL MVP debate. Williams stated that Mauer is at a disadvantage because he's a catcher and his legs are going to go on him at some point before the season's over. Except then Mitch said that Mauer is at an advantage because he missed the first month of the season, so he's fresher than he would be. Ok, advantage: push.

Then Derek Jeter came up. And Mitch made some point about batting average being an overvalued statistic. "Wow," I thought, "Mitch Williams is making a salient point."

Then Mitch took a turn for the inane. For some reason, Williams started comparing Jeter to Jimmy Rollins, who while a shortstop, plays in an entirely different league - so I'm not quite sure what any of it had to do with the AL MVP discussion.

That said, Williams, again emphasizing that batting average is an overvalued statistic, illustrated this by pointing out that despite a cavernous gap between them in batting average, Jimmy Rollins has 10 more doubles than Derek Jeter and has a fielding percentage that is superior by .007. End of story.

Well that's just great Mitch. Now let's finish the discussion. A .007 advantage in fielding percentage is nearly meaningless. The average Major League shortstop last year fielded 728 chances. A .007 difference in fielding percentage means that over the course of a season Rollins would turn roughly five more chances into outs. Five. That's less than one per month over the course of the season.

Of course, since Mitch is so plugged in to which stats are overvalued, he probably knows that fielding percentage is not a very accurate method of measuring a player's defensive value. A more advanced metric would be UZR/150. Now there's no denying that over the course of their respective careers, Jimmy Rollins has been a much, much, much better defensive player than Derek Jeter, holding a career edge in UZR/150 of 10.2 runs. However, this year, Derek Jeter's UZR/150 is 6.8 as opposed to Rollins' 5.9. So for 2009 at least, advantage Jeter.

How about offense? Well yes Mitch, Rollins does have a whopping 10 double lead. How about the other three types of hits a batter can get? 2009 slugging percentage Jimmy Rollins: .415. 2009 slugging percentage Derek Jeter: .482. And before anyone mentions a word about the new Yankee Stadium, let's remember that Citizens Bank Park is also very hitter friendly. Its one year park factors (102/101) are only slightly less offensive than Yankee Stadium's (103/103), and its multiyear factors (103/102) are nearly identical to how the Stadium has played in its brief history.

But, offense is more than just doubles. As Mitch knows, batting average is overrated. On base percentage is probably the best single measure of offensive value. 2009 OBP Rollins: .290. 2009 OBP Jeter: .398. Huge, huge, huge advantage Jeter. Both men bat leadoff. Over the course of a full season, Jeter will be on base roughly 83 more times based on their current OBPs. Jimmy Rollins' OBP is the absolute lowest of any Major Leaguer with at least 450 plate appearances this year. There are but six American Leaguers with a better OBP than Jeter.

How about something really advanced and all-encompassing: 2009 Wins Above Replacement Rollins: 1.8. 2009 Wins Above Replacement Jeter: 5.9. Once again, huge advantage Jeter. He's been worth more than three times as much to his team this year.

I'm not trying to bag on Jimmy Rollins. I'm not trying to suggest that Jeter is or isn't the AL MVP. But I am absolutely stupefied as to what point Mitch Williams was trying to make. That Joe Mauer has legs? That Jeter's not the MVP? That Jeter hits for average and that's all he's good for? That Jimmy Rollins isn't having an absolutely abysmal season? I don't know. I'm not sure Mitch knows. But, by virtue of his employment at MLBN, the guy is supposed to be a national authority on the sport. Whatever point he was trying to make, it was poorly, poorly constructed and its delivery was even worse.

In summary:
Joe Mauer's legs = a blessing and a curse, he may want to hedge his bets and cut one off
Batting average = overrated
Doubles = underrated
Fielding percentage = just right
UZR/150, OBP, WAR = non-existent
Mitch Williams = rivaling John Kruk for dumbest '93 Phillie turned analyst

Game 54: Get Back

I love afternoon matinee games. Baseball is made for sunny afternoons, and while the forecast for today isn't perfect, baseball in the daylight is still a treat. When I was younger, I lived for the days there was a weekday afternoon game on during summer vacation. Those were the best. I'd love to see the MLB Network eventually broadcast a daily afternoon game during the summer months. I only wish I still had months-long summer vacations to enjoy it.

The Yankees continually do their opponents a favor by having these get-away-day matinees, allowing them to skip town early and get to the next city in time for a good night's sleep. It's a luxury the Yankees are rarely afforded on the road, as most teams need the night time start to ensure a good gate. Even with all the moaning about the new Stadium, the Yanks would still draw close to a packed house even if the game started at sunrise.

Despite my affinity for these afternoon contests, I'll be stuck in my luxurious cubicle following on GameCast, while Jay will be in attendance. Rest assured there will be more on that later. I'll bide my time knowing I already have tickets for a few other weekday afternoon contests later in the season.

Today's game is all about getting back. The Yankees look to get back to 10 games over 0.500, hopefully on their way to 15, 20, and 25 over. They also look to get back to another axiom from the Torre years: winning the series, as they try to take the rubber game of this three game set. They look to get the offense and starting pitching back to where it was before poor performances from both yesterday. Mark Teixeira gets back in the line-up after he missed yesterday's game with a sprained ankle suffered while getting back at the Rangers on Tuesday night.

But more than anything else, today's game is about getting Chien-Ming Wang back. Getting him back from the pitching limbo he's been in for the past two weeks. Getting him back to the starting rotation. And most importantly getting him back to the form he displayed from the start of his career up through his season ending foot injury last year.

Expectations are the first step towards disappointment, so I'm trying not to expect too much from the Wanger today. He's looked good in his last two relief outings, turning in 5 scoreless innings and allowing only 3 hits and a walk against 3 Ks. But I don't know that we can draw anything other than an optomistic outlook from that. Getting Wang back to where he once belonged will likely be a long and arduous process given the injury, the beatings he took early this season, and they way he's been mishandled over the past few weeks. Regardless, today is an important first step.

Wang should be good for about 80 pitches today, which is assuredly why Alfredo Aceves was held out of yesterday's game. If he's on, Wang may be able to go six, if he's off the Texas line-up can chew up his pitch limit in the fourth. If he's really off he won't even make it that far.

As an aside, with Aceves held out yesterday, Brett Tomko was the de facto long man, going three impressive innings in relief of Pettitte. Remember when the Yankees said Tomko couldn't be used for multiple innings because he had been conditioned as a short-stint reliever this year? Another pearl of honesty from Girardi and company. I guess they feel that he was sufficiently stretched out after making two appearances covering two innings in the last two weeks. Remind me again why this guy is on the roster?

[UPDATE 12:02 PM: Pete Abe is reporting that Burnett has been suspended six games by MLB for throwing at Nelson Cruz Tuesday. How he can be suspended for six games due to an action that didn't get him tossed from one is a little beyond me. But it makes perfect sense in the pretzel logic that is the MLB discipline policy. Burnett plans to appeal, but we may see Hughes back in the rotation sooner than thought. Even if he serves the full six, I don't care. Burnett did what he needed to do for his team. If that's the price to pay for it then so be it. Meanwhile I'll wait for MLB to suspend Padilla as well. That is if Texas doesn't cut him first.]

Please use this as a game thread. We're not quite ready for a fancy live game chat, but I imagine several of you, like me, are stuck at some soul-sucking office today rather than sitting in front of your big screen with a frosty cold one. So let's commiserate in the comments.

Here's your video for today. As a special matinee bonus we'll do this a little differently. Rather than your typical video of the song or a live peformance we'll give you a two part, behind the scenes look at the making of Get Back. In true Fack Youk fashion, it's in black and white. So in my best Ed Sullivan voice "Ladies and Gentleman, the Beatles" with the late, great Billy Preston on the keys. Enjoy.

Get back, Get back,
Get back to where you once belonged.

Is Harold Reynolds Gonna Have To Hug A Bitch?

It seems like some sort of karmic justice that a community college named after a marine mammal whose population was decimated by sea faring vessels, would defeat a professional team named after marauders who raped and pillaged aboard them.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

SARASOTA, Fla. -- Virgil Vasquez gave up three runs in 4 2/3 innings, and Dave Davidson was charged with a blown save as a collection of the Pirates' top prospects lost to Manatee Community College, 6-4, at McKechnie Field in Bradenton.

I don't know what this says more about: The game of baseball in general or the Pirates as a franchise. Sure, the Pirates roster consisted of only Single and Double A players, but could you picture that headline with any other team's logo? My heart goes out to you, DJ Gallo.

End Of The Road For Schil-do

As much as I would love to see him make a comeback and get tattooed this year, Curt Schilling is hanging up his bloody cleats for good:

To say I’ve been blessed would be like calling Refrigerator Perry ‘a bit overweight’.

That line brought to you by Rick Reilly.

Four World Series, three World Championships. That there are men with plaques in Cooperstown who never experienced one, and I was able to be on three teams over seven years that won it all is another ‘beyond my wildest dreams’ set of memories I’ll be allowed to take with me.

Let the Hall of Fame debate ensue. I say "no", but those who exalt clutchiferousness would probably beg to differ.

I want to offer two special thank you’s.

To my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for granting me the ability to step between the lines for 23 years and compete against the best players in the world.

Jesus doesn't read your blog. He does read Fack Youk, though.

I guess this means he'll have much more time to devote to his political career and blogging efforts. How long until he's on the MLB Network? I give it two weeks.