Congratulations New York Yankees on your 2009 World Series championship.
It's nice to know that despite the global economic crisis and the atrocity of having to endure nine years while teams with a lower payroll beat you to the prize, good ol' fashioned having a shitload more money than anyone else still stands for something in this world. It warms the heart.
Not bitter at all here. You just had me rooting for the Phillies is all. The fucking Phillies.
I need a drink.
The Toronto Blue Jays claimed second baseman Jarrett Hoffpauir off waivers from the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday.
In order to make room for Hoffpauir, the Jays have designated lefty Bill Murphy for assignment. Murphy was excellent in his earlier, funny movies like Caddyshack, Stripes and even Ghostbusters, but then he got all, "I'm an actor." And his laugh production dropped off considerably. He still shows some signs of his ability to amuse when he teams up with director Wes Anderson.
While Hoffpauir saw a dip in his OPS in his first full season at Triple A two seasons ago, he recovered nicely this last year, smacking 14 dingers for Memphis while putting together an .843 OPS and eventually getting called up to the Cardinals. A career .365 OBP in the Minors ain't none too shabby either.
With supposedly shaky defence, this AAAAer is a depth move if I've ever seen one.
Also, he sort of looks like a douche.
Here are a couple of additional items that I didn’t really want to hold onto any longer…
Message For Beeston
I don’t usually do this, but our commenter Jeff absolutely nailed together a few perfect sentences on what the fuck is so bothersome about Cito’s golden parachute, even beyond the fact that his managerial style defies all logic.
“You hire the kid, you say how great he is, then you better let him, or his people make 100% of the decisions,” he says. “Anything else is half assing it. Yea, it's only one year, but you've got players going through important development years. Stop fucking around.”
Um… yeah. Exactly. This still completely feels like a total handjob-your-buddy fuckaround that’s going to serve no one well next year, except Paul Beeston and Cito Gaston.
Wilner on Wells and More On Gaston
You know what? Fuck the absolute fucking piece of shit clowns who like to needle me about parroting Wilner, as though there’s some incalculably vast number of opinions on baseball that one could hold, and the fact that there’s some overlap between what two people are saying means that one person is just parroting the other. Speaking of incalculable, that’s incalculably fucking stupid—so I’m going to quote some fantastic stuff from Wilner’s blog today at the Fan590 and not give a shit… er… well, beyond saying that.
Anyway, Wilner nails it re: Vernon and his somewhat-admirable desire to play hurt.
This is two years in the last three that Wells has tried to play through injury “for the good of the team” while going out every day in a very important spot in the batting order and - for lack of a better word - sucking. Is it his fault? Doubtful. It’s very difficult to blame a player for not wanting to come out of the line-up if he’s physically able to play (never mind play well). It’s exceedingly rare to find a player who will step back and say “Not only am I not helping, but I’m hurting the team and embarrassing myself in the process. I have to ask out.” Don’t blame Wells for wanting his name written into the line-up everyday.
. . .
At some point, Cito Gaston (and John Gibbons before him) has to be the grown-up, as it were, and tell Wells that he’s doing more harm than good trying to play in his condition and sit him down - or at least drop him to a far lower-leverage spot in the batting order until he gets healthy.
Gaston’s response to the batting order thing was always “if you’re not going well, you’ll come up in a big situation no matter where you’re hitting.”
Bang on. And… uh… about that Cito quote. I’m not sure it’s a verbatim quote from some point during the season, or if it’s just a paraphrase of something Cito’s said many times, but it’s the kind of thing that absolutely fucking kills me the he doesn’t understand.
CITO! For fuck sakes, buddy, let me slow it down for you a bit. When you being a new game, regardless of who was the last out in the last game, you start at the top of your order. That means that… say a game finishes and your fourth hitter was the last out. And say that him and the three guys ahead of him in the order ended up with five plate appearances each. How many plate appearances did the five-through-nine spots get? That’s right, four. That’s one extra plate appearance for everybody who came to bat in that half-finished last run through the order. And the thing about that is, over the course of a year, those all add up. So… how do you best use all those extra plate appearances that accumulate at the top of the lineup? You put your most productive hitters there. Otherwise you make the baby fucking Jesus cry!!!
It’s not a “stats” guy thing, it’s not rocket surgery, it’s basic fucking counting.
Houston Welcomes Arnsberg
Ugh. Apparently it’s piss on Cito day—get used to it, folks—except that this one you can’t take nearly as seriously. Here is what Astros blog Crawfish Boxes concluded at the end of a lengthy—and I’m sure well-intentioned—examination of what to expect from their new pitching coach, Brad Arnsberg, and the trail of dead arms that follows behind him.
Arnsberg gets blamed for the injuries to Marcum and McGowan, but in their formative years with the club, you can see he really didn't do much to hurt them. Only in 2008 did his usage patterns significantly change, and that also coincided with a new manager, Mr. Old School Cito Gaston. This is a classic example of a guy from a bygone era trying to throw pitchers out there like they did in the '70's and hoping it will work. In 2008, for example, Gaston used pitchers on short rest six times, while the American League average was just 3.7. In 2009, he was right in line with the league average of 3, but it still shows that he used his pitchers differently than most of the league. Arnsberg didn't like it, and clashed with his manager as was chronicled here and here. I'm not sure you can blame Arnsberg for what happened to Litsch but you definitely can't blame him for Marcum and McGowan. B.J. Ryan also can't be blamed on him, nor can A.J. Burnett, as both guys had either a history of injuries or a jump in innings before coming to Toronto.
. . .
Arnsberg coached for four different managers and only under Gaston did his track record go astray. Out of all his young pitchers, just three were inordinately abused: Chacin, Litsch and Vasquez. Now, we can see that Vasquez was just built to hold up to a higher workload, similar to Roy Halladay. Still, it doesn't excuse the abuse in the first place. Is Gaston more to blame for the last couple of seasons in Toronto? We can't REALLY tell, but after reviewing all this, I certainly feel better about the Astros' new pitching coach.
Thing is, Cito was only at the helm for four of McGowan’s 2008 starts—and only in one of those did he go over 90 pitches—so even I don’t think I could go as far as blaming Cito for that. But otherwise, the work these guys put in toward trying to paint Arnsberg as a guy who doesn’t destroy pitchers is pretty interesting.
From the completely unsurprising news file, Vernon Wells has a fucked up wrist and next week will have surgery to repair torn cartilage, according to the Associated Press. (Hat tip to reader Tercet on that one).
Now… who’s to say whether this had anything to do with Vernon’s shittastic performance this year? I certainly won’t. I’d like to hope it does—sad as it is that I feel optimism that the team’s highest paid player is going in for wrist surgery and is “”expected to be ready in time for spring training—but the fact that he got better over the last couple months of the season makes me figure that even bothering to suggest such a thing is fucking pointless.
And I don’t know enough about how the body works to have any clue why a fucked up wrist would lead to Vernon—a right-handed hitter—being only 30 points off his career .778 OPS against righties this year, but a fucking disgusting two hundred and fifty fucking nine points off his career .861 OPS against lefties. (And no, that number isn’t entirely inflated by his early-career success: he was at .898 in ‘06, .835 in ‘07 and .849 in ‘08 before laying a turd at .602 this year.)
Anyway, so yeah, there’s that.
Speaking of Vernon, though, if you’d like to quell some of the rage you feel by just the sight of his name, check out this piece from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, who caught up with him as he hosted his inaugural charity golf tournament in his hometown of Arlington, TX, for his Perfect 10 foundation, “which is aimed at helping the homeless children in the town he grew up in.”
I realize I'm late to the game in voicing outrage over the success of the Gaston: One More Year campaign, and I know that the majority of the outragers have already apologized for their immediate reactions to news that Cito Gaston will stay on as manager for the next season.
But why?
It remains a completely awful idea worthy of the scorn and dismay that it originally garnered.
Fuck this "Alex Anthopoulos has to pick his battles" bullshit.
Was it not this same mentality that led to the Vernon Wells contract disaster?
What future battles does this justification anticipate, anyway? Was Anthopoulos not hand-picked by Paul Beeston? Was he not one of the reasons that Beeston signed a three-year contract?
Am I actually agreeing with Richard Griffin when he says that bringing back Gaston means "there's a lame-duck manager, an unproven GM and bad word of mouth regarding the clubhouse atmosphere."
Ugh. I don't feel well.
The team is now officially fucked no matter what miracle strategy and direction that Anthopoulos has decided upon.
Reloading just got a whole lot more difficult. What free agent is going to want to come into the situation described above? Even Gaston has said he doesn't see a reason for Roy Halladay to want to stick around. What hope do we have in attracting other players who don't have a history with the team?
Rebuilding, which is the most likely option considering this move, makes absolutely no fucking sense at all with Gaston at the helm. In last season's mean nothing year, he was batting Kevin Fucking Millar in the clean up spot and not giving time for Travis Snider to hit against left handed pitchers. What the fuck?
Is this really the guy you want making decisions when the overall objective is to improve a young team?
With one decion, the future for this team right now reads to me like yet another lost year, even more disheartening than the last.
As Jays fans, granted, we have pathetically little to cheer for these days. Fuck, I'm fucking rooting for the fucking Phillies. Does it get any worse? Still, the baseball gods have been pretty kind to us in the post-season, first with the infamous Papelbon clusterfuck and then Burnett's gem of a two-innings-plus implosion tonight. You know, you can't shit on the dude too much. He has been pretty fucking nails in the playoffs. But still, it would've hurt too much for us if he didn't muff it at least once right? Sure, Girardi, take faith in the fact that Burnett's proven in the past he can pitch on short rest. He's also proven he can totally shit the bed. Gloriously. Right on. And yeah AJ, way to stare down the home plate umpire after your shitty outing. Sure, it was a picky strike zone but at least it was pretty consistent. Still, totally his fault. I'm with you on that. Thanks for the memories AJ.
...
And fuck, Phillies, what's with your fucking bullpen? Jesus! Are they going to have to send Lee out there for the next two games to pitch fucking complete nine innings in order to have a chance at winning this fucking thing?
I really wish I wasn’t so lazy that I’m now deciding that, instead of having a separate post, I’ll just drop a couple Jays-related links into the podcast post here. But fuck it. I had other shit to do today. Some of this stuff is a little stale, but… whatever…
Arnsberg
As I’m sure you’ve already seen, according to an article in the National Post, Brad Arnsberg wasn’t fired—he quit. But Griffin over at the Toronto Star isn’t so sure.
The fact the Jays would allow Halladay's best friend in the clubhouse, pitching coach Brad Arnsberg, to seek the same job with another team solidifies the belief the Jays plan to trade their ace.
While Anthopoulos claimed Friday he did not tell Arnsberg to look for a job, that the Astros called him asking for permission to talk, Houston's GM Ed Wade had a different view on how the Arnsberg deal came about.
"We were really excited when we found out he was available," Wade said. "There were some unresolved issues, and they gave him a chance to go out and look around, and he very quickly moved up to the top of our list."
Gaston
Jeff Blair, far less hysterical than yours truly, makes a good point about this Gaston nonsense, I guess. “I can't believe that Toronto Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos is all that thrilled to have Cito Gaston back managing the club in 2010. But I do believe he's smart enough to know he'll have to carefully pick his fights with president and chief executive officer Paul Beeston and that he's also smart enough to know Gaston's future is a battle he can't win,” he says, adding: “If Anthopoulos is as smart as I think he is, he'll use this year to get the best available managerial candidate.”
Not sure why you’d need a whole year for that—maybe he’s really studied Beeston’s methods well—but… OK.
“This deal makes it possible to replace Gaston at any time without unduly embarrassing him or costing him a nickel in the longer term,” says the Star’s Garth Woolsey. “Those players unhappy with him now, at least, have a deadline within which to operate. But they also must understand that he has significant input in the organization for at least five years. He'll still be around after many of them are long gone. If it feels like a compromise, so be it. There are worse strategies.”
Anthopoulos
Stephanie Myles of the Montreal Gazette takes a long look at the employment history of Alex Anthopoulos.
According to Shi Davidi of the Canadian Press, “Alex Anthopoulos is putting the final touches on a long-term plan for the Toronto Blue Jays and expects to share some of the details before next week's general managers meetings in Chicago.”
Halladay
As you probably have already heard, Cito had a thing or two to say about Roy Halladay probably being gone during his bullshit retirement gift press conference. Meh. However, in the same CP article noted above, Alex Anthopoulos says, “Roy's goals are the same as ours but his timeline might not be the same as ours and what I'm working through right now is how soon, in this off-season, can we turn this entire thing around, that we can be a team that really makes a run at the playoffs.”
Tenace
“I'm sure going to miss Toronto,” said forced-out coach Gene Tenace, according to Bob Elliott in the Toronto Sun. “I lived downtown and would walk to the park. People would yell hello at me on the street or talk ball. I never heard one negative response all those years. My family loved the city. I won't miss the game, but I'll miss Toronto.”
He also added, “If a player had a problem with Cito or me, why didn't they come to us instead of going to the papers? But some players you can't please. They make all the money and now they want to make all the decisions.”
A-Rod
Oh yes, and I couldn’t resist reusing my little A-Rod As A Centaur photoshop, which comes from my post at TheScore.Com Blog about how an A-Rod supposedly seriously fucking has a painting of himself as a centaur over his bed.
Aaaaand… the Podcast
Anywho, here’s this week’s podcast, with guest Mike Axisa of the awesome Yankees blog River Avenue Blues—who is also a contributor at the fantastic MLB Trade Rumors.
As always, the podcast is available at The Score, or through iTunes.
Mintmusical interludes: Tom Petty The Waiting, Faith No More Digging The Grave, New Order Run, Mum The Smell of Today Is Like Sweet Breastmilk in the Wind, XTC Life Begins at the Hop
OK, so I've calmed down a little since hearing the fucking ridiculous news that Cito Gaston will be back managing the next season, and... look. I've said here many-- many-- times that I really do think Cito is awesome... just not as the manager of a Major League Baseball team that isn't the early-90s Toronto Blue Jays. Yes, I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Gaston while the team was doing well last season, even though it appeared as though he was fairly fucking useless. Then things started to go south a bit. Then a lot. Then it got to the point where last year became the most dispiriting shitshow of a season I've ever had the misfortune to watch.
No, it was hardly Cito's fault that the team became so unwatchable, but he sure as shit did not help. Meaningless games were made unbe-fucking-lievably meaningless by the insistence on running a guy like Kevin Millar out there over and over and over. By fucking around one of the decent bullpen arms in the organization, Jeremy Accardo. By hitting one of the worst hitters in the American League, Vernon Wells (9th worst OPS+ among the 75 qualifiers), either 3rd, 4th or 5th for all but 35 of his 684 plate appearances (and Alex Rios, 5th worst, had more than twice as many PA hitting third than any other spot in the order). By fucking around Travis Snider and Randy Ruiz. By running Jesse Carlson into the ground. By continually refusing to make the most basic, obvious defensive substitutions and pinch hitting decisions. (And don't even get me started on the bizarre public statements he made-- about stretching out Accardo to start, about Barajas not being back, and throwing the bullpen's beloved Beej under the bus (even if that last one kind of made sense).)
Seriously, the season became an unwatchable mess for any fan who likes, while watching their team, to give some thought to what moves they'd make in order to best put the club in a position to win. You know... people who pay attention. Which is why so many people around here are absolutely gutted to have it spelled out so plainly that Beeston and Anthopolous either don't have the smarts or the balls to do what's right for the organization and end this fucking madness-- I'm surprised, actually, how few people were calling me an asshole for yesterday's post.
Speaking of yesterday's post, in the interest of clarity, let's review a couple points, just to make sure we're on the same page about why this is insane...
1) If the team is going to cut payroll, start fresh, and make 2010 a development year, Cito is not the right man for the job. Yes, he helped bring along Adam Lind, and yes, John Olerud and Shawn Green overcame his managerial tendencies to have good careers-- and maybe you can argue they were the better for having him-- but Cito showed all season, and all during his previous tenure, that his loyalty to veterans way too often trumps any notion of doing what's best for young players-- assuming you believe that the best way to get used to hitting MLB-quality pitching is with experience hitting MLB-quality pitching, and I have no idea why you wouldn't believe that.
2) If the team is going to raise payroll and try to compete next year, the margin for error is way too thin for a manager who pisses on defensive substitutions, pinch hitters, the importance of on-base at the top of the lineup, has no grasp of what meaningful statistics are (was Cito not justifying playing guys against certain pitchers because they'd had success in 10 at-bat sample sizes, for example?) and mismanages the bullpen the way Cito does. Yes, I've said many times that a manager doesn't really have that much impact on a team's overall success-- it's mostly on the players-- but obviously that's not quite right. There's a qualifier missing. A manager doesn't have that much impact on a team's overall success, as long as he's putting his team in the best possible position to succeed. You'd think it would be a given that a manager would do this, but evidently not. So, no, a manager can't magically make his team that much better, the way that people were constantly upset that John Gibbons didn't. But I'd argue it's far easier for a manager to have a negative impact on his team.
3) If the team is going to keep payroll about the same... that would be about the biggest fucking waste I've ever heard of in my entire life. To burn two full seasons? For what? It makes absolutely no sense-- in which case, I guess Cito probably is the man for the job, because keeping him around makes about exactly as little fucking sense.
4) And what almost sucks as much about this as the fact that we're going to have to watch another year of Cito's on-field shit parade is that, like I've said many times, it's another, bigger step towards absolutely destroying the legacy of one of the most beloved baseball men in the country. I honestly don't want to do that-- I just don't want to watch another season of this bullshit either. And... I guess maybe people really are dumb enough to fail to notice how utterly fucking terrible Cito is for another whole year, but I'm pretty sure that the more they see of him, the more likely it is that they clue in. Why put him, and us, in that position? To pander to nostalgia? Ugh. Plus, this is all really on Beeston's head-- another guy who seems intent on torching his legacy-- who looked bad enough already by burning a year before he formally took the job of president. And it makes Anthopoulos look either completely castrated or just plain retarded-- I mean, I almost understand Beeston being clouded by loyalty to his buddy Cito, but Anthopoulos not being willing or able to convince him otherwise? Holy fucking fail. The whole thing is just insanely fucking stupid.
Now... again, it's only for a year, which is the silver lining here. And maybe they have some moves in store that will improve the team so dramatically that my argument about the margin for error being too thin for a manager so willing to piss away opportunity will be completely destroyed. But... even though it does seem odd that Cito would even want to come back if payroll was going down and the team was going to suck, let's be serious... this is just Beeston giving a handjob to his buddy at the expense of the fans they need the most-- the ones who actually pay attention and like baseball enough that they haven't turned away from this shit franchise yet.
Thank fuck for the World Cup.
You stupid motherfucking morons. All faith I was willing to give Alex Anthopoulos and Paul Beeston has been completely destroyed by one move.
It has just been announced, according to Sportsnet, that Cito Gaston will be back coaching this team in 2010—after which he will retire. Brad Arnsberg has moved on to the Houston Astros organization, where he will be pitching coach. Bullpen coach Bruce Walton has been promoted to pitching coach, and Gene Tenace has retired from baseball.
Seriously, fuck this team.
How can anybody have the slightest fucking faith in Anthopolous and Beeston now? They watched Gaston’s bumbling fucking shitshow of an attempt at managing a baseball team all year, and have now fucking endorsed it? I’m sorry, but this is flat out retarded. There is no excuse for this, and no reason to have the slightest faith in this management team to not be complete fucking idiots.
Sorry guys, but you fucked up. Large. I don’t care if you’re throwing away a season. Throw away a season with a manager that won’t frustrate the living fuck out of anybody watching who isn’t a nostalgia-consumed twat. I’m sure Cito is a great dude and everything, I’m sure it would have taken a lot of balls to do the right thing and ask him to quietly shuffle into some bullshit front office position, but seriously… fuck you.
I imagine that at some point I’ll calm down and actually be able to stomach the thought of watching another season of this absolute fucking horseshit, but good fucking christ… what a disaster. Just so fucking stupid, words cannot describe.
I guess it’s good to know it’s only one more year, but for a team with a consumer confidence problem, this is a hell of a fucking kick in the balls to anybody who actually pays attention to the team. Will it really mean anything to the casual fans they’re courting? I fucking doubt it. But shit, I guess sometimes loyalty is more important than making decisions with a semblance of making an ounce of fucking sense.
Our friend Will Hill from TSN stopped by his old haunt down at 1 Blue Jay Way this week to chat with Paul Beeston and Alex Anthopoulos, and provided us with some insight on what’s been going on down there since Beeston formally accepted the removal of his “interim” tag.
“God's honest truth, Thrill,” Beeston told him, “I didn't decide to take this job until just the last two weeks. And it was all about Alex. This kid, he comes in my office and starts talking baseball and you can't help but get excited.” He added that he’s “been amazed at the quality and quantity of work Anthopoulos has already put in,” and that he thinks “we can be the Boston Red Sox”.
“I think it's flattering that he said that about me,” said Anthopoulos. “But I know that ownership has lobbied him intensely. I know the commissioner has too. I think everybody here in the office has. So to sit there and lay it in my lap, isn't fair. I think collectively all of us should be proud that we got him to stay.”
So… nothing too entirely new, but it’s good to see that it’s still a bit of a love-in down there.
Another ex-Ricciardi front office employee, Keith Law, stressed the same thing on Prime Time Sports last night, noting that the most important thing is that the president and the GM have a great working relationship. “To the extent that Anthopoulos has new ideas, wants to make changes to the structure of the department, to the way that they handle the amateur draft, to the way that they scout internationally, he should have a lot of flexibility to do so. And I’ve already heard that they are making some changes to the way the structure the scouting staff, which is great,” he said.
“You know what? That’s absolutely tremendous. JP Ricciardi gutted that scouting staff. It really hurt us in the amateur draft. It left us, I think, unprepared to scout and then draft top high school players. They realize that’s a core competence for a good baseball organization and they’re trying to get back there. And Paul Beeston is very much on board with some of these moves. I think Alex is a bright guy, he’s going to have good ideas, but you can’t execute those unless the guy above you in the hierarchy is willing to go along with it.”
Hill Wins Fielding Bible Award
I actually felt that Aaron Hill looked a bit stiff in the field—especially in the early parts of the season, when this fucking shitshow was worth paying attention to—because of the long layoff due to his concussion problems in 2008, but that shows precisely how fucking much I know, because according to the National Post, a panel of ten voters—including Bill James, Peter Gammons, Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski—have concluded that Hill is the best fielding second baseman in baseball, just edging out Dustin Pedroia.
Sean Henn
It was a pretty seriously underwhelming first player move for Alex Anthopoulos, who claimed model of conshitstency (see what I just did there?) Sean Henn and his usual 7+ ERA from the Orioles, designating Michael Barrett for assignment. But Bob Elliott—never one to have any kind of agenda to promote Canadians in baseball—let the GM put a nice spin on it in his report for the Toronto Sun.
“He throws 94-95 m.p.h. and his slider has depth. He's never been able to put it all together. In all likelihood he might not be a guy in our bullpen, but our coaches have had success with reclamation projects,” Anthopoulos said, referencing Scott Downs, Shawn Camp and Jesse Carlson, useful arms who’ve were pulled off the scrap heap.
“The Yankees gave Damaso Marte a three-year $12 million US deal, we can't. If we have to claim 10 arms and click on the 10th, it's a good investment with a huge upside.”
It’s absolutely fucking true. No matter how much a certain segment of retarded Jays fans wants to roll their eyes at these kind of moves, they’re fantastic when they pay off, and the times that they don’t… so what?
Posts
All Comments
