A copy editor at the Daily News apparently reads RAB. Check out a headline from today:
Ian Kennedy’s shaping up as Yanks’ mini-Mussina
How long has Mike been calling him Mini-Moose? Yeah, thanks for stealing, Mr. Copy Editor. We can’t wait until the media starts calling him IPK.
Yesterday, Wallace Matthews, who somehow has a job as a sports columnist with Newsday, wrote a piece about Alex Rodriguez and the now-infamous opt-out clause. His conclusion: The Yankees should wave good bye to A-Rod and instead invest in middle relievers because the Yankee Dynasty teams of the late 1990s won with good relief pitching. Yes, you read that correctly; a newspaper columnist is calling for relief pitchers instead of the best power-hitting third baseman in the game. Matthews’ column is so stupid that I won’t even link to it here. Instead, let me direct your attention to Ken Tremendous’ latest post on Fire Joe Morgan in which he absolutely eviscerates Matthews. Tremendous did what I wanted to do, only better.
The Post, echoing my belief that athletes have girlfriends all over, reports that A-Rod and his blonde girlfriend were spotted in five cities.
The Daily News reports that Cynthia, A-Rod’s wife, has left the couple’s apartment. Just think of the money, Cynthia. We already know that’s all Alex thinks about.
And the Blue Jays aren’t too happy because A-Rod called for a pop-up yesterday … while he was running the bases. Nice little league play for A-Rod there.
It’s the Alex Rodriguez show these days in the Bronx. Anyone want to take bets on where he ends up next season: Chicago or Anaheim?
Well, by now, you’ve probably heard about The Post’s bombshell of a cover story this morning. Alex Rodriguez, the wealthiest man on the Yanks, is fooling around while the Yanks are on the road.
Surprise. I bet this never happens to any other Major League Baseball player ever. I’m sure Jason Giambi and Derek Jeter don’t have girlfriends in every American League city.
But, of course, since this A-Rod and since A-Rod can’t seem to cut a break around here, Alex is the one who gets caught by the paparazzi and The Post is the only paper around town to print the photos and call the story an “Exclusive.”
Here’s what The Post has to report:
Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez stepped up to the plate with a mysterious, busty blonde in Toronto, as these intimate, exclusive photos reveal.
The cozy duo dined with two pals at a pricey steakhouse late Sunday night, then headed to a glitzy strip club before making their way to his hotel, where the pair ducked into an elevator and headed upstairs just after midnight.
In his own defense, A-Rod apologized for the indiscretion. No, wait. Just kidding.
In his own defense, A-Rod said, “No comment.” And a Yankee spokesman said that Alex has “never commented on his personal or private life, and he’s not going to start now.”
While we must consider the source – The Post relies here on numerous people simply referred to as “witnesses” – the article implies that A-Rod doesn’t stay at the team hotel on the road, cheats on his wife, gets caught and then goes 0-for-3 while making a costly error.
Just when I think the season can’t get any worse – a steal of home plate?! – it does. The 2007 Yankees will never cease to amaze me.
I hope the Baseball Schedule Gods take note: Baseball in New York during the first week of April is a Bad Idea. It’s miserable playing baseball in 30-degree weather with snow swirling; it’s miserable watching baseball in 30-degree weather. So try as I might, I just cannot fault the Yankees for the way last night’s game unfolded.
Luis Vizcaino, the only Yankee with a record, said it best. According to Tyler Kepner of The Times, it was too cold for pitchers to grip their breaking balls. And it showed.
So while Steve Lombardi accurately summed up last night’s game, much like Mark McGwire, I’m not here to talk about the past. Instead, let’s see how reporters summed up this game.
As the lovely montage above shows, the New York tabloids seemed fit to lay the blame squarely on Alex Rodriguez’s much-maligned shoulders. But that wasn’t the worst. Note this excerpt from the AP’s game summary:
Alex Rodriguez had a great opportunity to turn Yankees fans in his favor.
Once again, he flopped….
A-Rod, who is 4-for-41 (.098) without an RBI in his last 12 playoff games dating to 2004, tossed his bat aside in disgust after the popout and muttered to himself as he waited for a teammate to bring out his cap and glove. Often booed at Yankee Stadium for failing to deliver in crucial situations, he heard plenty of catcalls again — even from a crowd diminished by the cold.
Such drama for the second game of the season. A-Rod completely and utterly flopped. And let’s not forget to mention his post-season struggles even though it’s April and the regular season. That’s sound reporting and writing right there.
To this, I say, “Enough!” Enough dumping on Alex Rodriguez; enough laying the blame for every single Yankee loss on his shoulders.
Leverage Index experiments aside, let’s review a few key points that are seemingly glossed over in the articles about last night’s game.
So there are six factors that contributed to the loss tonight absent the weather and terrible pitching by the Yanks’ bullpen. But of course, the media just dump on Alex Rodriguez. They dump and dump and dump.
They mention Alex Rodriguez’s game 1 error but not Jeter’s three errors in two games. They mention Alex Rodriguez’s pop up with two outs but not Abreu’s disastrous at-bat. And Newsday and The Post couldn’t even come up with an original headline. Do they sit around their offices wondering how best to dump on A-Rod tonight?
Why do so-called Yankee fans want to see A-Rod fail? Why do his plays get magnified? This guy is the leading slugger in baseball over the last 10 years, and Yankee fans would rather see him play elsewhere. You are the people ruining baseball in New York.
Enough.
There’s a reason why the Mets fired Steve Phillips. It’s the same reason why he hasn’t been offered a position since, and why he always comes off on ESPN as knowing nothing: he hasn’t a clue how to construct a roster.
I don’t think I’m no to anything groundbreaking here, but I felt it an appropriate lead-in to his recent article on ESPN.com about Josh Hamilton. In it, he opines that the Reds are sending the wrong message by drafting Hamilton in the Rule V draft, thereby either giving him a major league roster spot or returning him to Tampa Bay. His reasoning:
The decision to acquire Hamilton and give him a chance to be a major league player without doing anything to earn it over the past four seasons makes a statement to current Reds major leaguers and especially to the organization’s minor league players. This one decision contradicts everything the organization claims is important…It sends the wrong message to all of the hardworking, dedicated young men who are paying the price to get to the major leagues.
I know their situations aren’t quite similar, but did the Blue Jays send the wrong message to its minor leaguers when it placed John Olerud directly in the majors following the 1989 draft? You could argue, I suppose, that they did, but then I must ask: did it really matter? They won the AL East in ’89 and ’91, and finished two games behind the Red Sox in ’90…and that’s before they rattled off two straight World Series victories.
In making this statement, Phillips once again makes no confusion over why MLB teams continually pass him over for GM openings. I’m not saying that he would be necessarily wrong for passing on Hamilton. But to criticize another team for taking that risk is unwarranted.
Finding viable major league players is no simple task. By selecting Josh Hamilton in the Rule IV draft, the Reds were attempting to fill a valuable roster spot with a potentially underpriced player. If it doesn’t work out, they’re out a net $25,000. If it does work, they have a cheap player (he’ll make around $400,000 for the next three years) under their control for six full seasons.
That, my friends, is more valuable than any message Steve Phillips thinks is being sent to the club’s minor leaguers. In truth, his entire view of the messsage being sent may be flawed:
Their [the ballplayers] take will be that if you have talent, it doesn’t really matter what you do or how you behave — there is a place for you at the top.
I’m pretty sure that’s not the message. Yes, Hamilton is insanely talented, but that alone won’t keep him on the Reds roster. If he was to hit .180 through March, I’m sure the Devil Rays would be welcoming him back to its system. Such is the nature of Rule V picks.
Phillips’s article cleary illustrates why he serves no purpose in the baseball analysis community. We’re talking about players and production, and he’s talking about hypothetical messages.
Photo courtsey Al Behrman/AP
It’s funny how some things work out. As I was searching for a suitable picture of Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, I found that the first Google hit for jeter arod is a story from 2004 about the how the friendship between the two stars remained in place but had cooled in the then three years since this infamous Esquire article.
Funny, I could swear that is nearly the exact same story as the one developing this week about A-Rod’s comments and Jeter’s response. Are the reporters in Tampa really that hard up for news?
Let’s be honest: It is unreasonable to expect that 25 guys on a baseball team will be best friends. I know this from experience. For ten years, I played on numerous teams. I played on after-school teams, summer teams and high school baseball teams. There were plenty of guys with whom I was friends and with whom I’m still friends nearly six years after my last game, but there were also plenty of guys about which I could care less. That’s all part of being thrown together into a situation with people who start out as complete strangers.
But when we stepped into the dugout, it didn’t matter who we ate lunch with in the cafeteria, how well we did or didn’t do in classes and what our weekend plans were. It didn’t matter if we were best friends, passing acquaintances or bitter enemies. We played baseball as a team. We were on the field to win, and we worked hard together to achieve that goal. We put aside our differences, sucked up our past problems and played to win.
That’s exactly what Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter have to do now.
It’s clear that these two stars aren’t exactly best buddies. While the staid Chad Curtis once called out Jeter because of his friendship with Rodriguez, those days are long gone. That fateful Esquire interview in April of 2001 drove that nail deep into the coffin.
But that was six years ago, three of which the two superstars have spent on the same team. It’s time for these men to put aside their differences and support each other on the field.
I’m going to lay the blame for this soap opera squarely on the shoulders of the usually untouchable Yankee Captain. Last season, Jeter, who has publicly supported the oft-beleaguered Jason Giambi over the years, refused to come to Alex Rodriguez’s support. It’s not his business, Derek said, who the fans cheer on and who they boo.
Well, as captain of the Yankees, it’s certainly his business to lead the team and stand up for his teammates. If that means sticking his neck out for the psychologically fragile Alex Rodriguez, so be it. If his words would help the team, then Derek must deliver.
(Image of Derek and Alex getting along from Scout.com)