The Wednesday Mug

You can always expect a mug unless told otherwise. I promised the first day that it would be erratically named and erratically timed, and that’s what I have delivered.

Absolutely crazy game. There were two plays in which Wilmot had 2 runners on the same base. With us up 3-2, they had runners on second, second, and third w/ 2 out and while the catcher ran the runner on second back to first the runner on third scored to tie it before they got the out at first. There was an AB for us in which two doubles were initially called fair and then switched to foul after the runner was standing on second. And there was a botched squeeze play, and 3 overthrows by pitchers to first, and an injury to our second-best senior. The winning rally against Brad was an easy grounder to first that the hitter beat out, a bloop to left, and then a 2-strike, 2 out shot to left that was only after a pitch that sure as hell looked like it should have been called strike 3. Brad didn’t pitch too well, but they should’ve won that game. They and we recognize that it happens in baseball, and Brad’s looking forward to whatever the late summer brings in his baseball career.

on an Alexei Ramirez first inning HR.

I argued this all of last April and May when he was in AAA and then August when Counsell somehow passed him up. Then he goes off and does well like many of us expected, and he “came out of nowhere”.

Personally, while Bud’s point is accurate, I think it makes him look like an ass. I know my Dad was never impressed by the “all the other kids are doing it argument.” To the extent that Selig meant his comment as a media criticism and that the NFL problem should get more coverage, he’s right. To the extent that he will be interpreted as suggesting that the press just picks on baseball and the PED issue should get less coverage, it was a stupid thing to say.

The reason the NFL doesn’t get as much coverage for their steroid problem as baseball is four-fold, in my opinion. First, they acted on their steroid problem much, much sooner than the MLB did, and much longer ago in time. Second, they have plausible deniabiliy on the HGH front because there is (or was, if I missed a news story on a new test in the last year or so) no available way to test for it. Third, the NFL and its fans are less obsessed with stats than baseball is. Not to say that there aren’t people who freak out over rushing totals, QB ratings and other more sophisticated statistical tools to measure player effectiveness, but most HOF candidacies (for instance) are based on feelings rather than numbers. That is of course particularly true of offensive linemen, who have almost no popular statistical measure of their performance (though folks do keep track of things like sacks allowed, etc.) Even when numbers are a significant factor, (rushing yards, number of catches, passing yards, completion percentage) the numbers involved are significantly less mythologized than they are in baseball, and thus when the numbers (say Merriman’s sacks) may have been produced with the aid of PEDs, there’s less of a sense of betrayal among the fanbase because the mythologized numbers have been diminished.

Fourth, and probably most important, the press and much of the public appears to feel that baseball buried it’s steroid problem for money, particularly in the mid and late 90’s when it was still trying to recover from the lock-out and the lost World Series. The league looked the other way and so did the union, and then the union stonewalled attempts to address the problem made by the leagues later on. And the press was complicit in it too. The story was there, and with the acception of a couple of stories about Mac using Andro and Sosa using Creatine (both legal at the time), no one bothered to poke around to find out what was going on. There were more stories about juiced balls than juiced players. Now, in retrospect, I think that some members of the press (and the public) are as upset with themselves and their professions as they are the players because they blew the story, some say willfully, and ended up being the unofficial publicists for a bunch of cheaters. I suspect that the current coverage is in part a reaction to feeling like a bunch of morons.

Oh, and the federal indictments and lying before congress, something that the NFL players and league officials haven’t had to deal with (at least not yet), tend to draw press coverage too.
  

I really miss Rickie.

Why not put Braun in the 2

Better leadoff options than Jason Kendall v LHP, if you were to use a lineup generator or optimizer:

Craig Counsell
Ryan Braun
Prince Fielder
Corey Hart
Mike Cameron
J.J. Hardy
Mat Gamel
Bill Hall

Or in other words he picked the worst fucking option in the entire roster to get the most at-bats. Lineups don’t matter very much, but when you do something that idiotic, you deserve to get ripped on for it. This is the first time I’ve been pissed at Macha.

We can probably all agree that the lineup looks ok except for Kendall in the top spot. Not sure about the alternative.

Counsell hasn’t hit lefties real well this year, but has been ok in his career.
Mike Cameron has also led off in the past, but is mired in a dreadful slump.
Corey Hart has been swinging a hot bat though. He might have been a better choice.