The First Rule Broken

I wonder sometimes if sportswriters are paying attention. I wonder if the lesser ones just take the words their idols wrote before the season, look at the standings, and then make up pointless lists. Our latest Nats bashing comes from Larry Dobrow of cbssportsline.com. Larry decided that a list of the best and worst organizations in baseball had to be made, and that he was the man for the job. His bottom four is Texas, Washington, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh. Well three out of four ain’t bad, but the inclusion of Washington is just plain silly. If somehow this were the same ownership group that ran the team that was in Montreal, and the first two seasons in Washington then he has a point. But since the team was sold and now has some of the best minds in baseball running the show Larry misses the mark. Let’s look at what Larry has to say about the Nationals and then tear it apart and show why he just isn’t very smart.

This situation should be nigh-impossible to screw up: great sports market aching for a winner, shiny new stadium about to open, well-heeled ownership group. And yet can't-sit-still GM Jim Bowden feels the need to keep scrapheap finds like Ronnie Belliard and Dmitri Young around for ... what, really? Making quick work of the postgame buffet? Simply indefensible.

I can defend it, and if it can be defended then it is not indefensible. Ronnie Belliard might be one of the best utility infielders around, so really why not keep him if you can. Belliard is signed for a relatively low salary and most likely will be the back up infielder next year. When he was in that role briefly in the beginning of the season he delivered many key pinch hits to either start or end game winning rallies. As for Dmitri Young, does no one pay attention to the batting title anymore? Is having a career .295 batter filling in for the forever injured Nick Johnson or coming of the bench really a bad thing? Also why does he feel the need to make fun of them for their weight? He calls them scrapheap finds, and then bashes keeping them. I have a table sitting beside my chair at home that someone was going to throw away. I use it as a place to keep my remotes and sit my drink on when I am eating dinner or watching TV. It serves a good purpose and was a nice find. If it actually were junk it wouldn’t be a find. Also take a second to compare the stats of Ronnie Belliard and Josh Barfield and then ask an Indians fan who they want at second.

This team should've been riding the player-development bandwagon from the first day they arrived, as a shell of a franchise, in D.C. A few 75-win seasons might be good for morale, but they're getting in the way of a bunch of 95-win ones down the road.

Now he takes the time to bash the team by laying out Stan Kasten’s plan. He lays out the team’s plan in order to bash the team. In whose mind does this make sense? He also mentions the first day they arrived. I am sorry to disappoint him, but that wasn’t the same ownership group. That ownership group and team president Tony Taveras is the reason that it is a shell of a franchise. Since the new owners have taken over they have been riding the player development bandwagon. They have spent large amounts of money to hire the best scouts, they have had two excellent drafts, and they are signing key veterans that can help the young players adjust to life in the majors. My main question really is did this guy do any research before he decided to rip a team. He rips them for signing two bench players acting like these are the only moves that will happen between now and next year, and then he lays out Stan Kasten’s plan as the way they should be moving. So his argument is pretty much, “They are doing what I think they should be doing, but I didn’t bother to research anything, and Keith Law and Ken Rosenthal says they are bad so I will say they are bad.”

The First Rule of being a Baseball Aficionado

My co-writer and I recently decided that we have a deeper knowledge than the typical fan. This is probably true since we focus primarily on baseball and believe football to be an inferior sport. we also take time to read many articles and books on the sport in order to expand our knowledge. Every fan in baseball needs to understand the game more than fans in other sports, but they don’t always understand every move a manager or team executive makes. While we know we aren’t smart enough to make these moves we can see the logic behind them. Therefore the first rule of being a baseball aficionado is to understand that you don’t know more than the people running baseball teams.


I am convinced that this is one of the main problems with today’s sports media. Guys like John Heyman or Ken Rosenthal believe what they think is the only way to think. That if they think a team should make a move and then they don’t they can’t understand the logic behind it. John Heyman didn’t understand why the Nationals would resign Dmitri Young. The answer is probably that they know something he doesn’t. He doesn’t have a working knowledge of the trades that were discussed or the medical reports on Nick Johnson. Jon Heyman also doesn’t know how Dmitri is with his teammates, but because Jon Heyman has an opinion on Dmitri Young as an out of shape, over the hill player he then thinks it is a bad move. Jon Heyman believes his opinions to be facts, and that if he ran a team they would be the greatest thing ever.


Normal fans may be smart, but they sometimes outsmart themselves. Prospects are nice, but they aren’t everything. Earlier this season the Braves traded Jarrod Saltalamacchia for Mark Teixeira, and now that the Braves are on a cold streak some fans are concerned about the move. They are part of the culture were anything new is exciting. Even though the Braves have a young catcher in Brian McCann some fans want to see the hot new thing stick around. The logic behind the move is correct. You trade from a strength to fill a weakness. The Braves needed a good slugging first baseman and they got it in Teixeira. What the Braves didn’t need was another young catcher that would be better off getting to play instead of sitting on the bench behind another young catcher. These fans made the error of assuming they knew more about baseball than the people running the team.


Looking at the past there are many moves that puzzled fans at first. The trade of Lou Brock to the Cardinals for 18 game winner Brogilio confused the media and the fans. The fans felt that Brogilio was an established star and that the Cardinals were trading for an outfielder that would never be any good. As time went on Lou Brock became a force to be reckoned with on the bases and at the plate as well as a good defensive outfielder. As for Brogilio, not much was heard from him after them. At the time of the trade some in the media called it one of the worst trades ever. They were right, but not for the reasons they thought. Bing Devine knew more about running a baseball team than sportswriters, but they assumed that they were in fact the ones with the deeper knowledge.


Knowing your limits is important in any area in life. Knowing that there will always be someone smarter, and knowing that there is always more to learn is the first step to learning. If one presumes they know everything then they will not seek further knowledge. In order to be a baseball aficionado one must first know that there is still more to be learned, and the ones that know what we desire to learn are the ones that get to run the teams.

A Beautiful Sickness

Jose Reyes might be the best player in the NL east. He is one of the best players this season, and he might even be one of the best ever when it is all said and done. But when I see Jose Reyes walk to the plate I feel sick. A dreadful fear grips me deep in the pit of my stomach. I know that something great is about to happen, and I am not going to like it. They need a new stat for Jose Reyes. Earlier this season I saw a bloop hit drop just between the second baseman and the right fielder, and somehow Jose Reyes made it to second base. That wasn’t slugging. It was pure speed and instincts. The ball was picked up as soon as it hit the ground, but Reyes was already half way to second base. The way that ball was hit it had no right to be a double, but Reyes made it happen.


If Jose Reyes makes it to first he might as well already be on second, and if he is on second he might as well already be on third. He seemingly takes bases at will, and very well could be the first player in a long time to steal 100 bases. Jose Reyes is an amazing athlete. Even though he can single handedly manufacture a run to crush my team’s hopes, I still enjoy watching him play. He is one of the best of this generation, and we should all, as baseball fans, be pleased we get to witness it. Every move he makes is a crushing blow to the hopes of our teams winning, but every move he makes is also another move into legend.


Reyes isn’t just an offensive force either. Any ball hit between second and third could very well end up in Reyes glove, and his arm is good enough to make a throw from anywhere on the field. He moves with an effortless grace that no human has any right to move with. He can dive to his left, right, come in quickly, and run back on balls better than anyone.


I look forward to watching him play, but yet I hate it. Reyes scores runs and takes runs away from any team he plays. He could have succeeded at any sport in the world. Imagine Reyes running down the sidelines, streaking away from a defensive back, and reaching up to catch a 50 yard touchdown pass. Imagine him driving through the lane, leaping between two defenders, and rolling the ball into the basket. Imagine as he dribbles a soccer ball, switches it from the left to the right foot, and then curves it neatly beyond the goalies reach. Jose Reyes is a symbol of what is right with sports. He is the type of athlete we spend our money to watch, even if we are spending it to watch him beat our favorite team.

Brandon Webb is not unhittable; everyone just thinks he is.

When a massive amount of exposure it put onto a single player, regardless of any sport, two things can happen.

In most cases, it creates what we all like to call "a curse," where this newfound exposure creates an opposite effect to the type of exposure it was given.

Example: in 2005, Jeff Francoeur came up and batted like .million and hit four homers instantaneously after being called up. Sports Illustrated jumped all over this, put him on the cover, labeled him "The Natural," (a la this year's Rick Ankiel) and then Frenchy came back to earth. Had he been called up sooner, I'm sure his averages would've dipped beneath .300 and his homers wouldn't have looked that impressive.

But in a rare few instances, the player who receives positive exposure will feel their confidence rise, and in turn their abilities will rise. I believe Webb is one of these instances. Not only does he feel confident that he is a good pitcher, all of the players in the league who have also seen this exposure now have this gnat-sized piece of doubt in the back of their mind that the next time they face Webb, they might just get dominated. With this kind of intimidation on his side, Webb's already won half the battle before even throwing the first pitch. Pitchers who win Cy Youngs are never the same pitchers again - you'll very rarely see them get completely annihilated barring hidden injuries, or the coming of age.

I do not mean to de-value Webb's abilities, but let's face it - Skip Caray, Bobby Cox, all the players on both teams, anyone who remotely follows baseball; we all know what's coming. A sinker in some sort of fashion; Caray called it best - "Everything webb throws has some sink to it." And that is not an exaggeration! He delivers his change-ups at a higher angle so that they still fall into the strike zone, and his fastballs that look like they're coming straight down the pipe will all sink and miss the strike zone...but since none the Braves are willing to be a little patient, they'd never notice this.

Naturally, this negative tirade, is the result of a frustrating loss. Sometimes I get tired of seeing Atlanta being made into examples, or being a red carpet for another player or team onto something interesting. Hearing that Webb now has four more complete games than the entire Atlanta pitching staff is kind of irritating, and I texted and IMed everyone i could to let them know that Webb was throwing a potential no-no, just to try to induce one of those "jinxes," which seemed to work when Kelly Johnson blooped a hail mary into no-man's land to get on base.

So let's just hope that Atlanta can blow out the D-Backs the next two nights, so everyone can talk about Arizona's embarrassing run-differential some more instead.

EDIT: Just got back from the second Arizona/Atlanta game. I thought I said let's have Arizona get blown out, not Atlanta... Micah Owings, the pitcher, hits two homers, and the Braves just pretty much stink up the joint, to the point where nobody cheered for damn near anything. Nights, stretches like this, are what make it frustrating to be a sports fan.

I need something to make me laugh.



That'll do.

I hate to say "I told you so..."

I'm not going to talk about the Braves' recent sucking against the Philadelphia Phillies, or how retarded Alfonseca looks like whenever he celebrates a strikeout.

I'm not going to talk about how tired I'm getting of ESPN picking up Braves games (read: late-games) whenever they're not picking up the Red Sox vs. Yankees.

But speaking of the Red Sox...

Their lead is now down to 4 games.

Every sportswriter, their mothers, their best friends for whom they ghost-contribute to their own putrid sports blogs lay the Yankees out to waste when their lead dipped to like 50 games behind Boston. Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Fox Sports, every major media outlet had claimed that the Yankees were done for. Sometimes I feel like I was the only person in the world who, despite not being a Yankees fan, was still the only person outside of New York to not count out the Yankees. Ever since Jeter gave it to us mathematically how they had to play, it just turns out that the rest of the team responded, and has been playing that way.

Yes, the Braves have won 14 straight division titles, which seems like a record that'll never be broken. But the Yankees are up to nine, and this season is not over yet. The Red Sox and Yankees still have to play several more times, and each time the Yankees win, that'll be an entire game in the standings. Sportswriters seem to have forgotten that just two years ago, Boston seemed to be cruising to a division title, until the Yankees literally snuck in and took it from them the day before the regular season ended.

There's nothing strange about how sports are - the world prematurely buries a perennial-good team during a slow start, said team is alleviated of the pressures of success. With the lack of pressure, the players play looser, more relaxed. A more relaxed, loose team has a tendency to win. It's happened in all sports, not just baseball.

And if people don't realize this, and keep the pressure on Boston to hold off the Yankees, instead of pressuring the Yankees to win #10 in a row, Yankee Stadium is going to have yet another banner in their rafters for their dominance in the Inferior League.

Sports and Bipolarity

No more Macay McBride. +1
No more Wilfredo Ledezma. +1
No more Craig Wilson. +1
No more Mark Redman. +1

Tanyon Sturtze on the DL. 0
Mike Gonzalez on the DL. -1
Willy Aybar on the DL. 0
Edgar Renteria now on the DL. -2

In comes Mark Teixiera. +2
In comes Ron Mahay. +1
In comes Heath Bell. +1
In comes Octavio Dotel. +1

Yes, it's subjective, but the way I see it, throughout the duration of the season, the Atlanta Braves have improved by about nine imaginary points over a neutral, imaginary ranking. The loss of Gonzalez and Renteria has put a noticeable hole in both the bullpen, as well as the lineup. But with the influx of all this new talent at the trade deadline, all I have to ask is this:

Why aren't the Atlanta Braves winning more?

Obviously, I'm writing this after watching Andruw Jones ground into a game-ending double-play, after the Braves had the bases loaded with ZERO OUTS. Of all the players in the world, Jeff Francoeur couldn't make magic happen, but hey, everyone's human. Naturally, there will be points in this season where I will gladly give birth to Andruw Jones' illegitimate child, but for the time being: Fuck Andruw Jones. Him and his achy elbow can sit on the DL and watch his gigantic paycheck diminish, sinking faster than his batting average. The Braves shouldn't have lost this game. At least not in regulation. I would've been satisfied if they could at least make Billy Wagner blow a save before blowing the game, but dependable Andruw generated a worst-case scenario for the eleventy-billionth time this season.

Which brings me to the question I just asked; why aren't the Braves winning more? After hitting three homers in his first three games, Mark Teixiera was relatively a non-factor against both Colorado and now against the Mets. Mahay couldn't get a single ball into the strike-zone against Damion Easley tonight, and blew the lead for Smoltz, who gutted it out and stayed in it long enough, even though we could all tell he didn't have his best stuff tonight. Anyone watching could see the anxiety in Smoltz's eyes when Bobby came to make the pitching change. It's like he knew that this was a night where a save would be blown, and essentially the game would be lost. Smoltz is like god or something, heed his word, and let him get out of the inning himself. Soriano continues to give up homers as often as Andruw Jones generates easy outs, and Dotel has been just as inconsistent. It's only a matter of time before Soriano is put on the DL for sucking, but have the team say something like "pinky tendinitis," or in Josh Beckett's case, an *expletive* blister. Maybe I haven't been watching enough, but has Heath Bell even gotten to pitch yet? That massive AL-pitcher type who looks like he's tipping over while he pitches? Where the fuck has he been?

So in conclusion, despite the fact that the Braves are supposedly now World Series contenders, in reality, they're really still just floating around in mediocrity. There is this weird triangular diagram with a bulb on each point, that the Braves operate on, and the bulbs represent the offense, starting pitching, and bullpen. At any given time, there are always two lights on... but never all three. The hitting will be hot, and the starting pitching will be awesome, but Soriano will somehow start sucking, and Wickman won't be able to close a game outside of Atlanta. Or like when Kyle Davies wouldn't be able to get out of an inning, but Villarreal and Moylan pitch a combined six innings and bail the team out. Or when Tim Hudson pitches 7.2 innings, and the bullpen holds the other team at bay, the offense decides that every hit must be a home run, and they go 1-2-3 in every fucking inning, and inevitably lose the game 3-0. Despite the influx of all this new talent, this operational diagram has not changed.

The Mets are prime for the taking with no Beltran, and Delgado unable to hit any splitters, and Wright chasing slides into the dugouts. They figure out Oliver Perez, but then give up game-winning home runs to Mr. Piss-Hands, Moises Alou of all people.

Being a sports fan is frustrating, as many people can attest to. When the days are over, I'd rather go through such emotional roller coasters over not having baseball at all, But just for one night, it's just a little bit worse, for one Braves fan.

What to do with Those Predictions

If by some chance you are a professional sports journalist and you happen to stumble upon this I would like to give you some advice. We all know you had to pick someone to finish last, and the Nationals seemed like as good a pick as any. Remember this next year though when you damn one team as having a possibility to be historically bad. With each victory the Nationals inch closer to winning 62 games and not losing 100 we know you cringe. We knew your predictions were wrong from the start. We knew the Nationals had no chance to lose 130, 120, or 115 games. Some of us even doubted they would lose 100, and now it is looking like they won’t.

As a sports journalist I know your editors handed down an edict that you had to bash the Nationals every chance you got. Buster Olney said they would lose 130, Ken Rosenthal said the front office was a mess as they dared fired people they didn’t hire, and Jon Heyman thinks the players are fat and the front office should trade their best players. Look at how many good teams went about building by getting hitters and a couple starters but forgot the bullpen (sorry Cleveland fans). The Nationals obviously have noticed the trend of teams with good relief pitching winning.

As a sports journalist I know your job isn’t to pay attention to pesky things like trends within the game. I also know you can’t judge a player on what they might do unless they play for the Yankees or Red Sox. While everyone else still realized J.D. Drew wouldn’t change. For some reason to you he seemed like a god in a Red Sox jersey.

If it is true what you claim that the Nationals still have no starters and no one on the team can hit then shouldn’t Manny Acta be a lock for manager of the year? The Nationals current rotation is three rookies and two career minor leaguers. Of course Tim Redding is more of a reclamation project, but don’t let pesky things like his surgery and other teams not giving him a chance get in the way of running down the Nats. The Nationals are still a building team and aren’t likely to be very good next year, but remember when you make your predictions just because you have never heard of someone doesn’t mean they aren’t any good.

Trade Deadline Theatrics

The trade deadline is over now, and by now, everyone pretty much knows everyone who was traded to whomever, and it's safe to say that the Atlanta Braves made the biggest impact move of the season by acquiring Mark Teixeira for five players, including Jarrod Saltalamacchia. Screw Eric Gagné and the Red Sox, he is overrated and injury prone, and hopefully he will not injure himself throwing fastballs at a trash bag again. Optimism returns to this travel-weary baseball fan.

As a Braves fan, the most important trade of the season occured two months ago, when Atlanta shipped off the worthless Macay McBBride away. It didn't matter that we got the less-worthless Wilfredo Ledezma in return, because we shipped his less-worthless ass off away yesterday regardless, the fact of the matter is that Macay McBBride was and now still is someone else's problem.

If anyone thinks Detroit's going all the way, better look no further than that gaping left-handed hole in the bullpen. The inferior league is going to be represented by Anaheim, folks.