Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Albert Pujols, Baseball, Major League Baseball, MLB, Most Valuable Player, MVP, NL MVP, Philadelphia Phillies, Ryan Howard, Sports, St. Louis Cardinals
Teams win games — not players.
The reason why I wrote the above is because a poster on ESPN.com concluded that because the Phillies won more games than the Cardinals, Howard should be the NL MVP (that argument is weaker than Chris Webber’s knees).
However, let’s play that card.
The Cards were projected to lose 95 to 100 games this season. Thanks to Pujols’ presence, they didn’t lose nearly as many and were a .500 club.
Howard has struck out 692 times since 2004. Pretty grotesque numbers. He’s usually hitting a homerun or striking out, while Pujols is banging the ball over the ballpark.
In 2006 the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series. Ryan Howard, a member of a Philadelphia Phillies team who didn’t make the playoffs that season, won the MVP.
Now in 2008, the Phillies won the World Series, the Cardinals missed the playoffs, and this is a little paradoxical, isn’t it?
At least there’s a good reason to be a Cardinals fan in 2008.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Baseball, Cleveland Indians, Cliff Lee, Cy Young, ESPN, Jay Mariotti, Joe Morgan, Journalists, Major League Baseball, MLB, Sports, Sports Journalists, Sportswriters, Time Lincecum, Woody Paige, Writers
In other news, Clay Aiken is gay.
Joe Morgan is livid.
And four people need to be banned from press boxes:
Demoted to the minors last year, Lee went a major league-best 22-3 this season with a 2.54 ERA. He received 24 of 28 first-place votes and 132 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America announced Thursday.
Please take the ballots away from writers until they promise, all of them, not to embarrass themselves with this contrarian bullshit every year. Hell, let the drunks in the bleachers vote.
Yesterday, Jay Mariotti wanted to know who left Tim Lincecum off the ballot entirely.
Woody Paige raised his hand, grinning like he was buttering the bread that got him the ESPN gig in the first place. I can’t imagine he has a vote. . . does he?
Whoever it was must have privileges revoked.
Bad refs get demoted all the time. Voters should be treated the same way.
Filed under: General | Tags: Baseball, Boston Red Sox, C.C. Sabathia, Los Angeles Dodgers, Major League Baseball, Milwaukee Brewers, MLB, Money, New York Mets, New York Yankees, Payroll, Salary Cap, Sports
Asides from steroids, this is why baseball is flawed.
The nonexistence of the salary cap.
A salary cap needs to be put into baseball, so that smaller market teams aren’t stepped on year in and year out. Asides from the Tampa Bay Rays from this past season, what other small market team has blown away the league over the past ten seasons — the Florida Marlins, certainly, but the 2003 World Series was that, one and done (I said 10 years, so the 1997 World Series in which the Marlins won is void.)
C.C. Sabathia, after a year where he was traded from the Cleveland Indians to the Milwaukee Brewers during the trade deadline in August, has stood up to his contract year and is bound to receive some lucrative money, from either the New York Yankees, Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Angels, and Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Brewers, Angels, and Dodgers are offering Sabathia approximately $100 million.
While the New York Yankees, the franchise in the league that wields the highest payroll in baseball, is blowing the said bids out of the water by offering Sabathia over $137.5 million (the current record deal that was given to Johan Santana by the New York Mets last off-season) so he will play in the Bronx, wearing pinstripes.
Go ahead. Let the Yankees spend rapidly. Even though they haven’t won a World Series since 2000 and they missed the playoffs in 2008, the myriad amount of money that’s being thrown around is pretty nauseating. I love baseball as much as the next person loves the sport, but it’s ridiculous to have to put up with these inane headlines every year about some team trying to screw another.
Not to mention every ’screwing’ involves either the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, or [Boston] Red Sox.
