The Girl Who Loved Andy Pettitte

From Chad Jennings’ SWB Yankees Blog:

Eric Milton was added to the Triple-A roster late Monday night and immediately placed on the disabled list. All of it was retroactive to Saturday.

There are now like a billion starting pitchers on the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre roster, including Russ Ohlendorf who they have got doing starting work until he gets into a groove and stops sucking. That means it’s very likely that the Sidney Ponson Experiment is at a close (it wasn’t a total failure, but it also wasn’t very pretty) and that someone from AAA will probably be joining the roster soon. The most likely candidates are:

• Kei Igawa - I don’t see how he could be better than Ponson, but I also don’t know if he could be worse. Actually, that’s a lie I know he could because I sat through all nine innings of this game and somehow didn’t throw myself off the tier at Yankee Stadium. I know he kills AAA hitters for the most part, but high fastballs don’t work in MLB.
• Jeff Karstens - Pitches about as ugly as he looks but the organization is in love with him. Also generally eats AAA hitters for lunch and is not so successful with MLB.
• Dan McCutchen - Probably the most interesting candidate, I haven’t seen him personally though. It seems like it would likely be a bad idea to rush him up to MLB instead of letting him spend some more time in AAA and having him join the team next year. Primarily a groundball pitcher but his gb:fb ratio hasn’t been that great in AAA which is not really a good sign.
• Ian Kennedy - Hey, remember him? Probably not coming back up to MLB this year (like Phil Hughes) as the organization has pretty much admitted he was rushed. But you never know because desperation makes people do strange things.
• Eric Milton - I don’t even know what to say except “Please, no”. I know his lifetime stats are slightly better than Ponson’s (average rather than below average!), but he is coming off TJ surgery and who knows if that will make him even worse than he was the last two years in Cincinnati.

I recognize that Milton is an emergency option and a flyer case very similar to Ponson, but at least watching Ponson pitch is special kind of comedy as opposed to just painful. I know the team expected Alan Horne to be ready, but I am starting to think the right move would have been to just trade him last year when his value was rather high. He’s 25 and oft-injured and I don’t think he is going to stick as a starter, but at the same time he has control issues that make him somewhat troubling as a reliever.

Rob Neyer is usually a very good writer for ESPN, and puts together more often than not very interesting things to read. Today he covers the best 50 players in the next 5 years. Interesting topic, right? Well, there are some decisions in it that don’t make much sense.

Here are some of the more egregious examples:

Oh, and one other thing: With one exception, you’re not going to find any “prospects” on this list. Jay Bruce and Colby Rasmus may be great baseball players but they’ve not played an inning in the majors, and even once they reach the majors they might need a year or two or three to become great major leaguers. Which disqualifies them from making our five-year list.

That makes sense, so we certainly won’t find one on the list, right?

20. Evan Longoria (22)

This might be too high, as Longoria hasn’t played a single inning in the majors. It might be too low, as any objective method will choose Longoria as the American League’s No. 1 or 2 third baseman over the next five years.

Hmm. That doesn’t seem right.

Then we have this:

14. Ryan Braun (24)

If this were only about hitting, Braun might be No. 1 on our list. But defense counts, too, and Braun offers no value at all in the field.

But who is ranked second?

2. Hanley Ramirez (24)

Easily takes the prize as baseball’s most underrated player; Ramirez toils in obscurity for the Marlins, known only to fantasy baseball owners.

But what about defense!

46. Melky Cabrera (23)

We’re still waiting for Cabrera’s first .400-plus slugging percentage and he’s not an on-base wizard, either. But he’s solid in center field, has held his own as a hitter and at 23 figures to get significantly better.

At 46, Melky is ranked higher than Matt Kemp (49).

49. Matt Kemp (23)

You have to wonder, just a little bit, about a player who can’t convince his team to give him an everyday job. And Kemp’s .342 average with the Dodgers last season was a bit of a mirage.

I don’t even know how to address this because Neyer should know better. Does Andy LaRoche suck because the front office of the Dodgers refuses to tell Nomar to sit down forever? Come on! Everyone knows Ned Coletti is a bit of a crazy man and don’t forget their manager last year was Grady Little.

40. Prince Fielder (23)

One might argue that a 300-pound first baseman doesn’t belong on a top 100 list, even if he did hit 50 home runs and is only 23 years old. For the moment, we’re inclined to give the big guy the benefit of the doubt.

Who would argue that?? Crazy people?? Mike Lupica??

Other strange things:

• Ranking Jhonny “Major Regression and Horrible Defense” Peralta at 21 and calling him a “power hitting shortstop”.
• Saying Dan Haren “isn’t a Cy Young candidate” then ranking him at 31 while Justin Verlander (who is/will clearly be a Cy Young candidate) is ranked 37.
• Knocking Kemp for not being able to claim a starting job but ranking Adam Jones at 35 because…he’ll finally get a starting job.

There are also a lot of significant omissions, especially young pitchers. Felix Hernandez? Jon Papelbon? Not on the list.

I refuse to believe Rob Neyer actually wrote this column (or at least that he wrote it as a serious column) because it is completely bizarre and makes little sense when held up to scrutiny. Just go read it and you’ll see what I mean.

2k Sports (via IGN) has reported what their unlockable teams for Major League Baseball 2k8 are. Most of them are rookie teams, and some have a few strange things (like Derek Jeter, 1996 AL Rookie of the Year being on the 1997 rookie team) but the most bizarre by far is the “Living Legends” team.

While specifics weren’t noted, looking at the roster I assume it’s all active players with at least 10 years of service time. I’m listing all the positions as what IGN published here instead of correcting obviously wrong ones so this is a critique of both 2K and IGN all at once.

• Pedro Martinez (P) - Yep, he is a living legend.
• Curt Schilling (P) - Okay, I guess I can fight this but you’ve got to fill a roster spot.
• John Smoltz (P) - Same as Schilling.
• Greg Maddux (P) - No arguments here!
• Randy Johnson (P) - Even if he wasn’t so good, he would be a living legend because he’s so frightening.
• Tom Glavine (P) - 300 wins makes you a legend, even if wins are the worst stat in the universe. (And no, I am not arguing that he isn’t anything but an excellent pitcher.)
• Kenny Rogers (P) - Uhhhh??????
• Trevor Hoffman (P) - Overrated but relief pitchers of his quality for so many years are very hard to find.
• Mariano Rivera (P) - No brainer.
• Tom Gordon (P) - Uh, okay I guess. Before he was Torre’d to death he was very good.
• Billy Wagner (P) - Same as Hoffman.
• Ivan Rodriguez (C) - No arguments.
• Mike Piazza (C) - No arguments.
• Jason Giambi (1B) - ?!?!
• Jim Thome (1B) - No arguments.
• Frank Thomas (1B) - No arguments.
• Jeff Kent (2B) - No arguments.
• Ray Durham (2B) - ?!?!
• Chipper Jones (2B) - Not a second baseman!
• Omar Vizquel (2B) - ?!?! + Not a second basemen!
• Ken Griffey Jr. (LF) - If we’re going with “not horribly injured Griffey” he should be in CF, but okay.
• Jim Edmonds (CF) - Not really in the “Living Legends” category outside of St. Louis.
• Gary Sheffield (RF) - I’ll buy it.
• Moises Alou (LF) - Arguments could be made either way.
• Kenny Lofton (CF) - Legendary annoyance, I suppose.

I’m not sure of the intricacies behind making the list but here are some players it makes no sense to leave off, especially when compared with the players that made the cut.

Mike Mussina (P) - Yes, once upon a time broken old Mike Mussina was one of the best pitchers in baseball. And this was true for many years, even when the Orioles became terrible after 1997. Nobody ever seems to remember this, but that is the Mike Mussina story in a nutshell.

Manny Ramirez (LF) - This is seriously a no-brainer.

Alex Rodriguez (SS/3B) - I don’t even think the point has to be argued.

Derek Jeter (SS) - He isn’t very good at fielding sure, but unlike Vizquel he doesn’t suck at that hitting thing.