things that really boil june's bunny rabbit:

the mere mention of the word labrum, kerry wood, carlos zambrano, dusty baker, the clutch myth, curt schilling, rbi, kenny lofton, the infield fly rule, joe morgan, wins as a measure of a pitchers ability... i'm sure i'm leaving something out.

Anyone who can look at this line

.321/48/130/1.031 OPS

and call the player overrated, is plainly stupid, pettily and pointlessly envious, or both.

in the regular 2005 season, Alex Rodriguez got on base more than David Ortiz by a long shot (.421 to .397) -- second in the AL only to Giambi -- and had a .610 slugging percentage, good for best in the AL - that's right, even better than Ortiz (gotta admit that one surprised me).

A-Rod's RC27 is an AL leading 9.53, which means that if you had had 9 A-Rods in your batting order this year, you'd be very poor. Ha ha! Seriously now, in addition to being very poor, you'd be very happy, because you could have expected to score NINE AND A HALF FUCKING RUNS on average per game. (In all of MLB only Derrek Lee's was higher, a hilarious 10.02.)

yeah, the inevitably HOF-bound A-Rod is sooooooo overrated.

And I swear this will be my only MVP rant:

David Ortiz deserves the MVP because:

1- he's more "clutch". Never mind that "CLUTCHNESS" is stubbornly statistically unprovable across all of baseball history and is a product more of our (and by "our" I include "sportscasters' and writers' ") human-nature desire to inject factually unfounded "character" traits into the players and create dramatic storylines, as well as the emotion we attach to typical "clutch" situations because of our passion for one team or player over another, than of reality or truth ... YES Derek Jeter does well when it matters, but he DOES WELL ALL YEAR LONG. (see previous post.) If he happens to CONTINUE to do so - i.e., be the same person - in October, or close-and-late, or with runners on, or to win the game, or with a gun to his head, or while juggling torches - that's great, but THERE IS ZERO MATHEMATICAL BASIS to support the myth that he is therefore CLUTCH. It's the tree falling in the forest thing - he makes a sound either way, whether it's May or October or down by one with a RISP.

The fact that it happens to make me really HAPPY if he chooses to have his (on average) one hit per night in a situation that ties the game, or that it severely pisses me off when Ortiz does it to win a game against the Yankees, DOESN'T MAKE EITHER OF THEM BETTER HUMAN BEINGS OR MORE "VALUABLE" AS PLAYERS. It just isn't so. Virginia, there is no fucking Santa Claus.

And don't be flapping Ortiz' 354 BA/RISP vs A-Rod's 290 at me. First of all, 290 ain't shabby. Second of all, that one thing doesn't outweigh all other factors to me. I'm not gonna take a Yugo over a Mercedes because the Yugo has a shorter turning radius. Please. Well, that's not a perfect analogy. I'm not saying Ortiz isn't a great hitter. He is. But I'm not going to decide that he's more VALUABLE as a hitter because he exceeds A-Rod in ONE criterion when he is inferior to him on all of the other ones that matter.

2- He has more RBI. Never mind that he has only partial control over RBI and it is therefore a stat of EXTREMELY LIMITED USEFULNESS... I mean, are you kidding, that someone who has 100 RBI for, say, the Yankees while batting 5th all year, should be given as much credit for it as someone who has 100 RBI batting first in the order for, say, the Devil Rays?? {suppresses further ranting, with difficulty}

To recap... Ortiz deserves the MVP over A-Rod because he is more "clutch" (which is like saying he's a unicorn) and because of his higher RBI total (which is like saying - no, it IS saying - that HE deserves the credit for everyone in front of him who got on base, never mind that they might, just might, had something to do with it themselves)...

all this despite having inferior offensive numbers on all other major counts and having an RC27 of 8.51. Uh, I can't be sure, but I THINK I'd rather have the guy that's gonna score me one more run, on average, every time, because I THINK scoring more runs USUALLY wins games and therefore he by definition is MORE VALUABLE than the other guy... but then I'm assuming that everyone agrees that winning games is "VALUABLE", which maybe isn't a safe assumption given all the profoundly stupid things I've been subjected to about these two guys in print and conversation.

And don't even get me started on the fact that Ortiz literally doesn't even statistically qualify to be considered for his defensive "contributions".

So: all you A-Rod-hating yankee "fans" (you know who you are, asshole mediaites) and all those who keep squawking that Ortiz deserves this award over A-Rod: I got a gatorade thingy full of boiling SHUT THE FUCK UP. C'mon over here a minute.
[june has decided]

Labels: team a-rod, yanquis