Connelly and stream of consciousness writing

Did you hear? Some footballer named Tom Brady got hurt. I've never heard of him, but ESPN seems to be shitting themselves. And hey, Tim Rattay and Jeff George are back in the headlines, so it has to be good.

Micheal Connelly - who's "Top Ten" blog is a representation of everything wrong with blogging, filled with random facts, fragmented thoughts and incomplete sentences - is goin' off the rails on a crazy train with Brady knee-Gate (first), and pretty much everything else Boston sports related.

Tom Brady is already a Hall of Famer. But Canton, Ohio and a yellow jacket wasn’t his quest. His mission was to be the greatest quarterback that ever played the game. For seven years the sixth round pick turned out to be a stunning amalgamation of Jack Armstrong, Johnny Unitas and Clark Kent. He won whenever he stood over center and thrived while others melted.

Couldn't we get some more contemporary QBs in there? Montana, Elway, Aikmen maybe?

But then for some reason he deviated.

Lol wut?

Deviated: 50 TDs/one league MVP/one play away from a fourth Super Bowl ring.

He inexplicably ventured from his set course and instead traveled roads that often have transformed immortals to mortals. With Yankee hat on head, he walked the streets of New York with a model on his arm while teammates and fans wondered where their quarterback roamed. Instead of maintaining a routine of excellence - he fathered a child, carried flowers, skipped offseason workouts and attended concerts instead of practices.

Reason Brady got hurt yesterday was NOT Pollard hitting him. No. It was because he
1) wore a Yankees hat (sin)
2) walked in NY (millions and millions of people do that)
3) dated a model (awesome)
4) had a freakin' baby
5) carried flowers

Are you serious? You work for the second biggest publication in Boston and this is what you come up with.

The fact that the Patriot quarterback has spent more time with the paparazzi this offseason

His fault. Do you know he calls the paps to photograph him and interrupt his personal life?

Just minues into a season that he entered distracted,

He sure looked focused completing 7-for-11 and 76 yards.

we discovered that Tom Brady, like ourselves, is vulnerable. The quarterback who once threw like Zeus now limps like Achillies.

ESPN bottom line: Brady, unlike Achillies, was not dipped in the River Styx ... Mets 5, Phillies 3 ...

* At the same time Brady was going down, Favre was throwing a 56 yard touchdown pass

And Micheal Turner was running for 200+ yards, McNabb passed his third TD of the day and a bunch of other shit happened. So yes, other football was being played during this time. Thanks.

* I say this every year but are there more commercials than ever - ads killed the flow of the game - game was boring

Game was boring. Brady hurt got. Ads killed game. Broken writing is broken.

* How many drops did Bowe have for KC

Well question marks are cool. ESPN doesn't list drops, but he had five catches for 55 yards and a TD. He sucks.

* Paul Byrd is 4-1 as a Sox while being provided 8.5 runs of support in his four wins

Evidence that wins are fucking dumb. Bird could have given up 8.4 runs in his starts and be 4-1. I can't wait for his olde timey wind-up, hittable 85 MPH heaters and lack of strikeouts in the playoffs.

* Brett Favre is on pace for 32 TD and 0 Interceptions

Brady for Favre, straight up?

This is the last Manny response, I swear

This week, at least.

Pretty much every Boston sports writer is straining their hack muscles writing about Manny Ramirez.

"He's quit on the team!" "He's not a great hitter anymore!" "He is too fucking weird!"

That last one is probably true. The others, not so much.

But now, the truth: Manny is just not a "gamer."

In the series opener, the Sox simply could not put their best team on the field.

Oh, to be sure, there were gamers out there.

Odds that ... is mentioned

Dustin Pedroia - 1:5

Kevin Youkilis - 1:2

JD Drew - 100:1

Jon Lester (didn't pitch) - 5:1

Take, for instance, Dustin Pedroia.

Bam!

The kid lacks the size and the speed to be a big-time big leaguer,

Also, skin pigment.

yet he is an All-Star and in pursuit of a batting title because he is a tough, determined sparkplug of a baseball player.

Jesus H. Christ.

Determined, sparkplug, balding, short tough-guy: .317/.363/.455 with 30 doubles, nine homers and a 28 BB/37 K rate.

How about he is an awesome fucking hitter? Why oh why can't 3'7" slow white guys be good hitters? There is no reason, because Pedroia is. Spare me all this anecdotal bullshit.

How about David Ortiz? He was so stressed out when the Red Sox were falling apart during the last days of the 2006 season that the club had to yank him out of the lineup and send him home to Boston for medical tests.

What the hell are you talking about? And who cares?

Kevin Youkilis? We now pretty much know Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain is going to aim a fastball at Youkilis’ head the next 100 times he faces him, just as we also know that Youk will be knocking people over to get to the plate for at-bat No. 101.

Because we all know non-gamers (let's call them "players") - players - just lay there after getting HBP, demanding to be taken out of the game and then sulking in the dugout instead of cheering on their team.

But the real fun did not begin until the Red Sox returned home to face the Yankees on Friday, at which time Manny took a look at Francona’s lineup card, saw his name there, and told bench coach Brad Mills, “Um, no.”

The enraged Red Sox called Manny’s bluff and sent him out for MRIs on both knees. Surprise, surprise: The tests came back negative. That’s when the Sox whispered the D word - discipline - and that’s when Manny caved.

Alas, it was too late for the suckers, er, fans, who paid top dollar for Friday’s game.

Those suckers - getting to see an exciting 1-0 contest between bitter rivals.

Sucker #1: "I paid to see MANNY! Not a great baseball game featuring a team I love!"

Sucker #2: "Manny's not playing?" *ties noose to hang self*

The Sox came up empty in seven innings against the hard-throwing Chamberlain, losing 1-0, and we’ll never know if Ramirez, hitting .487 during an 11-game hitting streak, might have made a difference.

He sucks at hitting, so who cares? He probably would have let three strikes go by in the ninth, just to make a point. And .487 during 11 games? Take that shit elsewhere, there's no room for facts here.

You were ripped off, Red Sox fans. And you have a right to ask for your money back.

If you paid for this Herald, that is.

And the Manny hate train keeps on chugging

This time, Tony Massarotti of the Boston Herald is the culprit. Channeling the spirit of Shaughnessy, Massarotti is the latest writer to run a first ballot Hall of Fame hitter out of Boston.

Until now, Manny Ramirez had the talent to offset the attitude. But the simple truth today is that he is overplaying his hand.

I was under the impression that the term "overplaying his hand" meant giving away too much information. But here, it's used instead of the phrase "living off his reputation" or something like that. It's also not really true.

Entering this weekend’s series with the New York Yankees, despite having played as many games as any Sox player but Dustin Pedroia, Ramirez did not lead the team in runs scored, walks or, most importantly, RBI.

RBIs are dumb. That would be like if I measured your writing performance by ABI (articles batted in). You get an ABI if your article is published after one by Steve Buckley or Jeff Horrigan. Your pay is based on the amount of ABIs you get and when you do bad, Manny Ramirez will write an article about trading you.

Sound good?

Manny is also second on the team in walks (50 to 59, behind the now loved JD Drew), third in runs and second in RBI. What a piece of trash. I think Massorotti read this recently.

He did not rank in the top 20 in the major leagues in homers (19, 23rd), RBI (62, 24th) or slugging percentage (.530, 27th), all of which supports an interesting paradox.

Wow. He doesn't rank (by a super slim margin) in a random number you picked? And since you love team ranks, he's tied for first on the team in homers and third on the team in slugging - which I am surprised you know about, it being a nerd stat and all.

As a player, Ramirez is aging.

A wild fact approaches!

It means Ramirez’ skills are deteriorating and his attitude is as rotten as ever, and it means the Red Sox don’t need to find a Hall of Fame-caliber player to replace him anymore because Ramirez no longer is a Hall of Fame-caliber player.

This argument is idiotic. Did the Giants look for a HOF-caliber player to replace Bonds? Did Greg Maddux command a HOF-type player in return for his services? 99 percent of the time, when HOF bound players are past their prime, it would be completely foolish to expect a "Hall of Fame-caliber" player in return.

Hey Cardinals, how about Manny for Pujols straight up? They're both Hall of Fame bound. Huh? Huh?

Truth be told, none of that is news. What is news is this: MARz [this is the HILARIOUS acronym Massorotti gave to Manny. Get it? It's almost Mars! The red planet?! Aliens are from there!!] isn’t one of the truly elite hitters in the game anymore.

This is probably true. But no one with a brain thinks he's "truly elite" anymore. But he makes a sick L/R combo with Ortiz and I'd rather "overpay" him than Carlos Delgado or Gary Sheffield.

Take away the first 19 games of this season

No. Those games happened during the season.

(after that feel-good, deeply philosophical spring) and MARz entered yesterday batting .290 with 13 home runs and 42 RBI in his past 76 games, the equivalent of about a half-season.

~.300/26-30/85-100 sucks!

During that same period of time, he had been outproduced by such luminaries as Adam LaRoche, Hunter Pence, James Loney, Cody Ross, David DeJesus, Bengie Molina, Jorge Cantu and even David Murphy.

Now I don't know what measures Massorotti used to define "outperforming" (I am going to assume "running out ground outs" and "sac bunts" were high on the list) but I am going to use OPS, OPS+ and WARP3.

I am going to include those 19 games - mainly because I am not a dick and those games still count in the stat books.

Manny: .922/140/7.5
Pence: .735/92/4.3
LaRoche: .814/114/5.1
Loney: .823/112/5.3
Ross: .810/112/5.6
DeJesus: .819/116/5.9
Molina: .734/92/5.3
Cantu: .832/120/6.8
Murphy: .780/107/5.2

So yeah, he has like 100 points of OPS (which I think even Massarotti can understand is good), is actually fairly an above average MLB player (which is a 100 OPS+) - unlike nearly every one of these players - and is almost two wins more valuable than all but Cantu.

Proof is fun!

The obvious issue now is that Ramirez no longer is a historic run producer, though clearly, nobody has told him. He continues to act as if he invented the RBI.

I like to picture Manny sitting in his mansion on an old leather chair, wearing a smoking jacket, partaking in a particularly fine brandy and looking over his BABIP and LD%, laughing as people still hold RBI on a pedestal.

Again: RBIs are stupid, they are nearly 100 percent teammate/position in the line up reliant. Stop it. Please.

The decision doesn’t look like much of a decision at all.

And here’s the astonishing thing:

It might have as much to do with baseball as anything else.

I have no problem with the Red Sox cutting ties with Manny. If they can get an Adam Dunn or a Jason Bay or a Matt Holliday, I would be thrilled (although, at least in the case of Holliday, they will cost just as much).

But this will not be a baseball decision. This will be the front office caving to a suffocating amount of media pressure and witch hunting.

"He may have pushed an old man! Get him!"

"He fumbled around in the outfield once! Burn him alive!"

"He doesn't run out ground outs every once and a while! Heretic!"

The dude is one of 15 outfielders in MLB with a .900 OPS. With Ortiz back, his numbers will go up.

Step the fuck off.