Ow, F***, That Hurts
The
Corporal Touches the MLB Hot Stove
by
Dan McKeever
ATTENTION!
Welcome
back, men. Lots to talk about this week, but I’ll have to make it quick. I’m catching a plane in an hour to Milan- a few
buddies and I have tickets for the last three dates of Floyd Landis’ Summer of Love European Tour, where he’s
defending himself against doping allegations in cities all over Europe. I heard the Madrid
show was kinda weak, but Floyd always has a good rally in him.
The main attraction in
the media circus these days is, of course, the MLB hot stove, a carnival of sorts that springs up in mid-summer when people
literally have nothing better to do than look at Buster Olney (if they ever make a movie about Buster Olney, and he’s
not played by either William H. Macy, or the guy who played the creepy wheelchair mutant in X2, a great injustice has been
perpetrated). In the course of fulfilling my duties as a manualbuzzer.com writer (whatever those turn out to be), I’ve
come up with the Corporal’s breakdown of the MLB hot stove hoopla.
This time of year, the
top stories generally fall into 4 categories.
1. Players the Yankees Are Interested In
2. All- Stars the Nationals (Or Some Other Shit
Team) Are Practically Begging You To Take Off Their Hands, For Some Reason
3. Trades Involving C-Level Players Nobody Really
Cares About That Still Somehow Merit a Breaking News Update On ESPNEWS
4. Really Good, Franchise-Caliber Players That
Stick With Their Small-Market Team That Can’t Really Afford Them To Help Said Small-Market Team Rebuild
Now that
we’ve got the categories in place, let’s recap the action so far, shall we?
Leading off, we’ve got a Category 2 trade between the Brewers and the Rangers. After he refused their 4-year,
$48 million offer (reportedly, the sticking point in the negotiations was a bag of chili cheese fries), the Brew Crew (True
story: According to Johns, the Brew Crew recently diversified the sausage race by adding Chirozo, a spicy Mexican sausage
mascot) dealt All-Star slugger Carlos Lee (.286/28/81/OBP .347/SLG .549 in his fifth straight year with 25+ HR at age 30)
for outfielders Kevin Mench and Laynce Nix (.284/12/50/OBP .338/SLG .459 and .094/0/4/OBP .118/SLG .125, at ages 28 and 25,
respectively) and reliever Fransisco Cordero (5 blown saves in April, a major league record). The Brewers also included minor
league OF Nelson Cruz, while the Rangers chipped in minor league pitcher Julian Cordero.
This trade is stolen straight from the fable wherein a blind man trades his one measly dollar for two quarters,
and later deals those two quarters for three dimes, and so on. Teams like Milwaukee and Washington continue to insist on dealing away every high-caliber player they have for pennies
on the dollar, and it can only be attributed to bad management. According to ESPN Insider Buster Olney, the trade was
also fueled by the Brewers' inability to stand "the fat-man smell" any longer, and the Rangers' desire to get Mench the hell
away from the team buffet table.
A fifth grader could do the math- If you add up Mench and Nix’s home run and RBI
totals, you still don’t have Carlos Lee’s totals. Adding Mench and Nix’s OPS will yield you a larger figure
than Carlos Lee’s OPS numbers- the same goes for batting average. It shouldn’t take any higher than a fifth-grade
mind to understand, however, that Mench and Nix would have to occupy two lineup spots, seeing as you can’t exactly pull
off a Dragon Ball Z-esque fusion between the two outfielders to make one uber-outfielder (who still can’t defeat Frieza).
The whole (Lee) is greater than the sum of his parts (Mench and Nix), even when the numbers would indicate that the sum of
the parts is greater than the whole. What makes this trade so incomprehensible is that in this case, the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts anyway! Let’s prove this mathematically, shall we?
Let M=The mediocre offensive
production of large-headed OF Kevin Mench
Let N=The lousy offensive production
of defensively-oriented OF Laynce Nix
Let C= The All-Star caliber
offensive production and solid defense of OF Carlos Lee.
M+N<C
And there you have it- irrefutable evidence that Carlos Lee is a better asset than the combined benefits
of Mench and Nix. Faced with this evidence, the Brewers, in an overwhelming display of logic…trade Carlos Lee! Apparently,
Brewers ownership doesn’t look at SAT scores when hiring a GM.
This is why shitty franchises tend to remain shitty, while good franchises tend to stay that way. It's
Newton's First Law...
Every
object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.
Certain franchises have
defied the mold, such as the Mets. A laughable team in 2003, an external force (Omar Minaya) changed their state of motion.
The general managers of most franchises, however, the Brewers included, simply don’t understand that in a team sport with no salary cap, dollars equal wins. This is Steinbrenner’s First Law,
and Steinbrenner could buy and sell Newton’s ass a hundred times over. To be perfectly
clear,
$ = W
…where $ represents money spent on quality players, and W represents
wins.
Elsewhere in the league, in a Category 3 development, Cleveland Indians (remember them?) 1B/DH Ben Broussard was traded
to Seattle for OF Shin-Soo Choo. That’s all that needs to be said. Let anybody who cares about a Cleveland-Seattle trade
(read: Chris Thomas) find out more on their own time. OK? That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Finally, in a category I development, the Yankees are interested in Bobby Abreu and Wilson Betemit. The fact that people
seem to ignore about these kinds of stories is that the last time the Yankees went to the World Series (2003), their primary
deadline acquisitions were…drumroll please…Karim Garcia and Aaron Boone. Before you go hyping up another potential
Yankee acquisition of some National League star, think about that- their impact guys were two C-level NL scrubs. Personally,
if I’m the Yankees, I’m all over some unremarkable guy on a mediocre NL team…Kevin Mench, anyone?
I would have a category 4 story here, except that anyone who’s ever followed baseball knows that the idea of
a big fish staying in a small pond to help the team grow and build is absolutely hilarious. Until the day they replace the
Devil Rays with the New England Patriots, you won’t have to worry about Category 4 stories.
Before I go, I’d like to wish Peter Gammons well. Peter, just so you know, your voice has lived on in your absence,
seeing as every baseball analyst on TV has noted that every single MLB team needs pitching. Fight the good fight, Peter.
DISMISSED!
