C.C. Sabathia = Tim Redding

Ahh MLB's trading deadline. It has to be one of the easiest times to be a baseball writer.

"Team X leads the player Y sweepstakes!!!!!!"
"Here's some cockamamie trade scenario!"

Or, in Jayson Stark's case, "The trading deadline totally sucks."

So before we get too close to that onrushing deadline, and before we all get too carried away with rumor-mania, we'd just like to slip in the following public-service announcement, to remind you of exactly what the trading deadline really is:

Overrated.

And as well all know, Stark is the king of all that is over/underrated in baseball.

There's no commodity teams chase harder at the deadline than starting pitching. And it's mind-boggling how rarely it gets them anywhere. Consider this:
• The last two starting pitchers acquired at midseason to win a World Series game were Jeff Weaver (picked off the scrap heap), for the 2006 Cardinals, and Mike Torrez (a relic of another era), for the 1977 Yankees.
• And the last two pitchers traded on Deadline Day (July 31) to win any kind of postseason game were Oliver Perez (a reclamation-project throw-in), for the 2006 Mets, and David Weathers (as a set-up reliever), for the 1996 Yankees.


This distortion and abuse of stats is truly awesome. Last dude to WIN a POSTSEASON game.

C.C. Sabathia could go 16-0 with 800 Ks for the rest of the regular season, pitch five no hitters in the playoffs (all loses, due to errors) and the Brewers could lose in game seven of the World Series 1-0 and you know who didn't step up and win a playoff game? Sabathia. Peice of crap.

So remember, friends, there's no assurance that trading for a C.C. Sabathia is going to give your team any better chance of winning the World Series than trading for, say, Tim Redding. And that's a fact.

Let's pull over the Crazy Bus on the way to Madness Town, Stark has lost his damn mind.

You're really saying that Sabathia gives the Brewers the same exact chance to win the Series as Tim fucking Redding? Really? You, Jayson Stark, are saying this?

"And that's a fact." That makes me so mad. He could have just left it at "Tim Redding." But no, Stark is pissed and everyone should know it. "That's a fact, motherfuckers! Who would win in a fight, Tim Redding or God? Trick question, Redding IS God."

I would love to have an alternate reality where the Brewers trade for Sabathia (we'll call this reality "Earth") and one were they trade for Redding (this one: Starkatopia) and Stark and I would have a bet on who will win the Series. The teams would (of course) replay the rest of the 2008 season 1,000,000,000 times to remove any outliers (see what I did there Stark. Sample size - know it, love it).

I would bet on the Earth Milwaukee Brewers every single time. And probably steal a lot of Stark's money. Which I need.

The reason, said [Rockies GM] O'Dowd, is simply that those starting pitchers only get to play every five days. So "just look at the number of starts a starting pitcher is going to get by the end of September," he said. "It's probably 10. So if the guy doesn't dominate in eight of those 10 starts, it's a disappointing trade."

I have to call bullshit on this assumption. Dominate in eight of 10? I would take "dominate" in 4-5, "pitch very good" in 3-4 and "quality starts" in the rest. O'Dowd wants eight one-hitters with 12 Ks each or that trade sucked.

Position players are different, he said, "because they can blend into the mix." And bullpen arms, in the right role, "can make a big difference."

We're going to take a stroll down a road I like to call O'Dowd's Crazy Math Lane.

Starters playoff innings (rough estimate): 10 starts, ~6IP/start = 60 innings.
Reliever "making a big difference" innings: ~1IP every game (resulting in arm explosion), assuming the team plays the max amount of games = 19 innings.
My brain: whaaaaa?!?!!?!?!?

Even if a reliever goes Keith Foulke in 2004, pitching like every game and essentially ending his career, that's not even close to the innings a SP would give you. But they would "make a big difference" so they count for triple.

And by the way, we can assure you O'Dowd really believes that, even though the only kinds of players he has on the block this month are (coincidentally) bats and relievers.

Could it be because no one wants his mediocre SPs? And "bats and relievers" is like 80 percent of his roster, so whatever.

But those monster starting-pitcher deals? They create "a tremendous amount of pressure," he said. "And not many guys are able to handle that."

But relievers who are accquired to close for a new team against hitters they have never faced, with all eyes on them in ninth, have no pressure at all. Eric Gagne was as cool as a cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce.

"The reason is there isn't a perfect team out there," said Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski. "So what happens is, as soon as you make one deal to address your biggest need, it creates another need."

The Brewers just traded like three prospects for Sabathia. Exactly what need was created there? The need to have awesome dudes in your farm system? Most playoff trades involve prospects. I am beggining to wonder the mental state of these GMs...

Or even when those deals work, you can still get flat-out unlucky.

Behold the first intelligent remark in this article.

Ask former Astros GM Gerry Hunsicker, now a senior vice president for baseball operations in Tampa Bay. He made two of the best midseason deals of the past decade -- snagging Carlos Beltran in 2004 and Randy Johnson in 1998.

Neither trade got his team to the World Series, even though it definitely wasn't their fault.

Conclusion: this article is utterly pointless.

Beltran hit eight home runs in that postseason alone -- but Roger Clemens couldn't hold a one-run lead in Game 7 of the NLCS. And Johnson had a 1.93 postseason ERA, but his team scored two runs total in his two October starts -- "so we lose two low-scoring games in the first round," Hunsicker said, "and we go home." Hunsicker has been asked "100 times" if he would make those deals again. He would. But that doesn't mean he still isn't haunted by how they turned out.

He's haunted by the result of the games, not the deals themselves. He said he would do them again every time. Again, pointless article. Let me re-write it in like eight words:

Sometimes deadline deals work out. Sometimes they don't.

And you'd have a sidebar of those that did and those that didn't. Done and done.

Best part about all this? Stark then goes into like a 8,000 word rundown of a billion different trade scenarios. At least he stuck with his media criticism angle.

Tony La Russa slobber-fest: exhibit 3478

Cardinals manager Tony La Russa can do the follow things, if all the features on him are to be trusted: 

cure cancer

fly (more like a glide, but still amazing)

manage the shit out of teams

eat a 60 oz. steak and still be hungry

drive drunk

That last one may or may not have a feature on it. 

Gerry Fraley, go where hundreds have gone before.

Tony La Russa has pulled every gadget from his managerial bag of tricks:

Batarang, shoe phone, water squirting flower, new iPhone, helicopter hat, he's got it all. 

A total of 74 lineups. Pitchers batting eighth. Relievers in the rotation.

Dog and cats living together. Mass chaos. 

But really, pitchers batting eigth!? Oh. My. God. What a fucking maverick. La Russa can't be held down by your laws of "common sense" and "good decision-making." Unless you have a badass hitting pitcher (i.e. fat, like Zambrano or Sabathia) and a really terrible eight hole hitter, this is stupid. It isn't genius.

Nine starting infielders. 

But you only need four! 

The Red Sox and Yankees have had like six+ starting IF. So have the Mets and probably a bunch of other teams. This means little.

Eight starting pitchers. Seven starting outfielders.

Yankee starting pitchers:

Igawa

Mussina

Pettttttittttte

Chamberlain

Kennedy

Hughes

Rasner

Ponson

Wang

That's nine. Girardi is a damn savant.

One standing ovation.

Of all the articles I've picked on, this is the front-runner for "cheesiest soft lead." If I was lactose intolerant, that line would have killed me.

At various times the DL has included a Most Valuable Player winner in Albert Pujols,

Losing Pujols for any stretch sucks, but I would take ~120 games of Pujols over like 90 percent of MLB first basemen. Oh, and you're managing the best friggin' hitter in baseball.

a pair of All-Star starting pitchers in Matt Clement and Mark Mulder

Both of whom suck now.

"It starts with our leader, number 10," Isringhausen said. ... 

La Russa wears number 10.

Thank God that was cleared up. I would have thought an actual player was number 10, you know, someone who can affect the outcome of games. 

Every manager must live with setbacks. It is, as they say, part of the game. La Russa has also dealt with unspeakable that were not part of the game.

Which I will now speak about.

He has twice had a player die: Darryl Kile in 2002 and Josh Hancock last season. 

I am not sure what's worse, bringing these two unfortunate stories up again or using them as ammo for why La Russa is a great manager. 

If ever there was a good reason for a team to curl up into a ball and melt away, it came in those seasons.

If ever there was a muddled metaphor in this article, it came in those lines.

The Cardinals essentially have only three every day players: catcher Yadier Molina, third baseman Troy Glaus and Pujols.

*walkie-talkie voice* Breaker breaker, we got a cherry picker on your six.

This is bullshit. So any player who is somewhat platooned is not an "everyday player?" The Red Sox have an OF rotation of Drew/Crisp/Ellsbury/Ramirez. Does that mean none of them are "everyday players?" No. That is dumb. 

Rick Ankiel and Ryan Ludwick have more than 15 homers each. They are everyday outfielders. Tons of (every?) teams rotate players to keep them fresh/keep them away from lefties or whatever. The Reds have like 10 outfielders. The Mets have used a bunch too. Who cares.

Each [of a variety of mediocre baseball players] goes in and out of the lineup as La Russa weighs who is hot against who could suffer from overexposure.

Why not just say cold? You've already used the "hot" cliche, just run with it instead of being quasi-clever/confusing. "Who's hot versus who has below average body temperature."

The best thing about that line is there is no way to prove the right-ness or wrong-ness of it. Ankiel could have just gone 5-for-5 with five homers and 12 RBI and if La Russa sat him for a game because "he was getting overexposed" and then puts him back in the next game and he goes 5-for-5 again with five homers and 12 RBI, he's a genius. He's a great manager of player feelings - a baseball player whisperer, if you will.

The Cardinals have obvious holes. The most glaring need is a big bat to provide lineup protection for Pujols.

Two guys with 15+ homers (whom you mention like 10 paragraphs earlier) not enough?

"Everybody knows how we player the game," Pujols said. "Everybody knows we're not afraid."

No. 10 wants it that way.

With a gin and tonic please. 

RE: The dude who writes the MSN baseball power rankings

Link that tricked me: "Is Tampa Bay baseball's best team?"

Me: No.

Rankings: Rays 1, Sox 2, Cubs 3.

RS/RA differential ranks:
Cubs +94
White Sox +87
Red Sox/Phillies +72
A's +59
Rays +56

My use of colons: excessive.

Mr. October, candy bars, 'Phews' and hundreds of other anecdotes

Curt Schilling is near the end of his career. His Hall candidacy will be much-talked about until 2013-14, mainly because he's not a "stat" guy as much he was a "big game" guy.

Robert Moyer, at my beloved DugoutCentral.com, is a "big game" guy guy.

Stats are great.

I love stats. At times in my life I have literally lived them, and better ones are being developed constantly.

Me too! Wanna have a beer sometime and talk about Robinson Cano's BABIP or Roy Oswalt's FB/HR ratio?

But let’s not get lost in them, folks. With the power at our hands today it’s all too easy to do so.

Invitation rescinded.

Phil Melita’s recent article on Curt Schilling’s potential Cooperstown worthiness made a number of great points and elicited a stream of terrific responses ... However, the impact of a player on the Game is more, and sometimes less, than the sum of his statistics.

Best part of that paragraph, capilization of the Game. Like the Game is more important than You Are.

An area where Schilling most certainly does merit consideration, whether he adds a single W to his career total, is his personal impact on the sport – and that is indeed an intangible. Did he entertain people? Enthrall them, at least at some sustained peak? Was he a “character” that added to the color of the game? Did he rise above it when the spotlight was on him?

I don't care, none of that matters, it's impossible to determine, blah blah blah...

Seriously, "a 'character' that added to the color of the game?" Like Jon Papelbon? Is someone who is weird more Hall worthy than someone who is "normal?" Who decides who is a "character?" Is Carl "Dinosaurs Are Fake" Everett slightly more HOF worthy because he was a nut job? Couldn't one argue that everyone is a character, somehow? Is there a star in baseball who's personality-less (Pujols, maybe?)? I could ask a billion more questions, but they all come down to...

Who the hell cares.

All these things more rightfully enhance a player’s chances of reaching Cooperstown. Oppositely, no matter the quality of their statistics, deficiency in any or all of them shaves their prospects – just as stratospheric numeric performance can and does compensate for otherwise blandish presence.

Let me break it down, MC Hammer-style:

Awesome stats, cool dude = increased chance for Hall

Awesome stats, boring dude = slightly less chance

Really awesome stats, boring dude = push

Reggie Jackson and Rafael Palmeiro ... had “relatively” similar careers

Except Jackson had like twice the Ks, less hits, slightly worse: OBP/SLG/RBI/2B. Similar enough I suppose.

But what fan who watched both players in their primes would begin to argue that Palmeiro had a fraction of the electrifying impact Jackson had on the game, especially when the pressure was greatest and spotlight brightest?

I guess no one - Mr. October, straw that stirs the drink and such. But what does it matter again?

Jackson was a first-ballot Hall of Famer who earned fully 94% of baseball writers’ votes in spite of a middling .262 career BA and record shattering 2,597 whiffs.

And - assuming no one cares about roids, which effs up this comparison anyway - Palmeiro should be 100% first ballot. Benchmarks are lame, but 3,000 hits and 500 homers is pretty nuts. Plus, dude won a gold glove when he played like 1/2 a season. That's gotta be worth something.

Reggie didn’t get the nickname “Mr. October” by accident. And it wasn’t an accident that he had a candy bar named after him and created waves of headlines and ripples in the crowd wherever he appeared. Opposing fans always knew when he would come to bat; they would time their beer runs and bathroom breaks to make sure they wouldn’t miss his titanic swings. Entire stadiums sat on the edge of their seats and let out collective “Phews!” when he fanned with a game on the line, or crossed their fingers and mumbled prayers to their Almighty that he get a chance to tie one when they were down. They would scan their scorecards and beg for walks, hit batsmen, anything, ahead of him just to get him into the batter’s box.

I have nothing to say about this anecdote avalanche, just wanted to get it out there. Buzz Bissinger better watch his ass, this guy is a pro(se).

There are no statistics for these things, but fans know them, respect them and employ them as their own measures of Hall of Fame worthiness,

Which is ridiculous because people have crappy, false memories.

every bit as much as numbers, awards, and the opinions of baseball Talking Heads.

Funny thing is, talking heads love the anecdote explosion you just dropped earlier. Much more than stats and junk.

Oh, and:

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself - "Well...How did I get here?"

Letting the days go by/Let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/Water flowing underground
Into the blue again/After the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/Water flowing underground.

We must not lose sight of intangibles as our data-mining tools become more powerful and contributors and readers alike grow ever more agile in their use. These tools leave us richer in numbers, but if we aren’t careful about how we use them, they can make us poorer in context.

I understand what is being said here. Being a big, memorable character should increase your Hall worthiness ever so slightly. But to say that two guys with almost identical numbers - one is an attention hog, the other, a quiet guy - should have a disparity between their Halliness, is patently dumb.

If David Ortiz gets in on the back of his game winning bombs and "clutch" hits when he's done (assuming he doesn't go Bonds on us), I will scream and crown Robert Moyer king of all that is anecdotal and right with the Hall.

Schilling’s stats may be borderline for Cooperstown – may be. Are his contributions between them – his swagger, sweat, bloody sock and promises made and promises kept – enough to push him over the top?

If I were a betting man, I would bet that Schilling gets in at some point.

Note to all borderline HOFers: start a crazy blog, call out Kobe Bryant, put ketchup on your sock during the playoffs and start a video game studio.

Jemele Hill has different definition for 'good' than rest of world

So Jemele Hill is back after a little suspension for some Hitler name-dropping (hey, it happens).

Her newest claims that the West is totally overrated. The whole thing actually boils down to the sports-writer axiom "defense wins championships." Yawn.

The West (the bad conference) has totally unexciting 110-109 wins, that often involve creative offense, big name players going back and forth and generally pleasing basketball.

The East, meanwhile, has battles of will, grinding out 80-79 wins, where both teams shoot 30 percent and shoot 40 free throws. *300 voice* This. Is. Basketball!!!!!!!

Understand, this isn't an argument about which conference is deeper. Clearly the West wins that argument. Every Western playoff team won more than 50 games,

That's nuts.

while just three teams in the East accomplished that.

That's poopy.

Only four Western teams had a losing record against the East -- the SuperSonics, Clippers, Timberwolves and Grizzlies.

Who were like, all last place teams.

Just four Eastern teams managed a winning record against the West.

East: 50 win teams - three
West: 50 win teams - eight

Top five scoring teams
East: zero
West: five

Top five in points allowed
East: two (including numbers one and two)
West: three

But despite those gaudy, imbalanced numbers, the East's recent dominance in the NBA Finals has earned its teams the right to tell everyone to be quiet about how great the West is.

Dominance is winning three out of the past five trophies. Actually seems pretty balanced to me ... except when you look at the past ten seasons and see that seven out of ten were West teams.

The past few Western Conference teams in the Finals have had one very obvious character flaw:

Bad match-ups? Getting jobbed by refs? Simply playing poorly for a 4-7 game stretch, which could happen to anyone?

They've been softer than John Daly's midsection.

Ahhh, softness. Not being tough. Baskets are worth two points (sometimes three!), but body checks or punching the backstop after a dunk is worth five points.

The Mavericks mentally shrunk against the Heat in 2006.

Wade shot 97 free throws in six games. 16 per game. Again: that's nuts. It wasn't some wizard shrinking the minds of the Mavs - the Heat shot like sixty times as many free throws in the series.

The Mavs were also outscored this series by a total of six points. One game went to OT. Could it be *gasp* luck? No, mental shrinkage.

The Lakers were completely undressed by the Pistons in '04.

Sexy.

And this year, reigning MVP Kobe Bryant and his sidekick, Pau Gau-soft, were punk'd by the Celtics.

Call 911, we got a buuuuuurrrrn victim.

It's often been argued that if you entered Western Team A into the Eastern Conference, it'd either win the conference outright or at least be among the the East's top teams. But after watching how the Celtics annihilated the Lakers, how can that possibly be true?

Math. It's because of math.

The freakin' Golden State Warriors, who won 48 freakin' damn games, missed the freakin' playoffs in the freakin' overrated West!

They would have been the four-seed in the East, assuming they wouldn't blow out shitty teams like the Knicks, Bucks and Bobcats and get to 53+ wins. Hell, the damn Trailblazers, at 41-41, would be better than the Sixers, Hawks and Raptors - all East playoff teams.

The fact that teams get to 40+ wins in the deep-as-all-Hell West is a testament to how good these teams are at winning basketball games. I would argue that they would get many, many more wins in the East - where 37 wins gets you a spot in the playoffs.

At least in the East, there's no pretending. When Eastern Conference teams stink, they make it obvious (see: the 76ers', Nets' and Cavaliers' Finals appearances).

I've never been on a debate team, but I am pretty sure they teach you not to totally deflate your own argument.

"The East is better because when their teams are bad, they're bad. They aren't like 'we got 50 wins, but we secretly stink!'"

Summation: West teams = good, but not really good. East teams = sucky.

Bravas, Hill, bravas.