This just in!!!!

I am watching soccer while eating lunch at work, and almost lost my pasta when this flashed on; 'the bottomline'

"Lebron James and Microsoft terminate contract, shutting down www.lebronjames.com"

Here's what I think

Who would ever possibly ever in their wildest minds ever ever ever want or need or care to know that, ever?

Mizike Frizzancesa

One of our followers took the time the transcribe some inane babblings from the man who is the authority on sports, life, and having high cholesterol, Mike Francesa. I received this via email, and to the literally half dozens of people who read this blog, we are going to see about making reader comments available in the coming days.

But for now, here is Mike, who clearly didn't have a fucking clue what he was talking about, blessing his listeners with a succint, concise interpretation of an NFL rule. Bear in mind this is a direct quote.

Mike Francesa on 11/24 explaining the free kick that happened during the Giants-Cardinals game to his audience:"If you catch that ball and fair catch it, you have the right to free-kick it without a play. It's a play that's been on the books forever. If you catch the ball on the fair catch there, you have a right to try and kick that and if you get the free kick, it is a field goal. It does not happen because, you know, it doesn't happen very often. But if you can catch the fair catch there on the ball, on the return, catch the ball there, call for a fair catch you can then kick that ball for a field goal. It's on the books, it's called a free kick, it's legal, it doesn't happen very often. They have to be kicked a very long distance, but there's nobody in front of you. So, it's on the books; just look under free kick."

And THAT folks, is why they pay him the big bucks...

~Jean-Pierre

They unleashed him!

TO finally had a breakout game this year. His first big yardage game in like 78 games (I'm joking). But seriously, its been like 7 games I think (I'm at work now, so ill find out for sure the games when I get home). But my frustration is with ESPN of course. Its his first exceptional performance this season, and they wanna analyze every fucking catch. And put little sight line graphics of where the DB wasn't looking, and show that TO was looking in exactly the right spot. Then TO is in a press conference going "They unleashed me!" and all the reporters laugh like he hasn't stunk it up all year. You know what? They didn't fucking unleash you. You played the fucking 49ers, at home, and Romo is healthy. And on the long TD catch, it was fucking offensive pass interference. I'm sick of ESPN highlighting miniscule bullshit all day long. I don't wanna begin talking about a breaking news update every hour about Andy Reid saying "McNabb is our starter". I wouldn't care as much if they called it TO-Gate, or McNabb-Gate, or even just Watergate. That would make it really seem like something important. But now I've gotta get back to Work-Gate, cus its important.

-cheers

The Hall of Impact

That is what Jon Heyman wants to rename the Baseball Hall of Fame. Literally. In his weekly spot with Mike Francesa, Jon Heyman said that Mike Mussina shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame because Heyman (who gets to ultimately vote on this by the way) said that he votes on "impact" that a player has on baseball. Mike Mussina, doesn't quite rate so high on Heyman's "impact" meter.

Heyman claims "I watched Mike Mussina's career, and to me he's not a Hall of Famer." Far be it from me to criticize a man who actually is in the BBWAA, but I'm going to do it anyway. This is an unfair stupid, narrow-minded way to vote. Why in God's name would you not look at his numbers, process them, and come up with a rational reason for or against? You can't possibly quantify "impact." It is a made-up bullshit word that is wildly subjective. There's not a chance in fuck that Jon Heyman watched every single one of Mike Mussina's starts. No chance he saw how many leads his bullpen may have coughed up for him, or how many times his team's offense went quiet. You can't just determine whether or not someone should go to the HOF based on whether or not they "feel" like a Hall of Famer.

Check this out :
http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/mussimi01.shtml

There's Mike's career numbers provided to you by the BEST statistics website on the internet. Now I despise the Yankees and everything about them, but I would say that the dude deserves to get in. He was steadily awesome for what seems like an eternity. He pitched in the AL East smack dab in the middle of the juicehead era, and consistently put up solid year after solid year. His strikeout totals hover around 200 year in and year out, and his career WHIP (probably the best stat to measure a pitcher's effectiveness) is a shade over 1.1. That is really, really good. Scroll to the bottom of the page to check out the pitchers in history who Mike is most similar to, and you'll see 5 out of the 10 are Hall of Famers, and the other 5 are just nasty as hell.

And by the way, the fact that men actually use that 300-win thing for pitchers as a good indicator of getting into the Hall or not is borderline criminal. So, rather than going by 'imapct" or "feel", I invite Jon Heyman to make a logical, statistical argument against Mike for the Hall of Fame. Maybe he could! I'm not saying Mike should be a lock, but it would sound better to have a professional baseball writer back his words up with evidence rather than hokey, subjective crap.

Oh and Jon, Bert Blyleven deserves to be in too you dickhead.

~Jean Pierre

A quickie...

Mike Francesa, on the FAN speaking to Jon Heyman regarding Dustin Pedroia:
"He may be smaller than A-Rod, but he has a bigger heart."

Can this be proven?

it's a sad day

Just like my usual Saturday morning, I wake up, have breakfast and a cup of coffee, then put on soccer. And while i watch soccer, I browse around the inter-web and go to all the sites that I frequent. The main one being FJM, and after I catch the bad news about them shutting it down for good, I come to this blog to see Jean-Pierre has already extended our sincerest thanks and gratitude to the guys of FJM. Like Jean said about his experiences, they've also changed the way I watch and think about baseball. And like we've said previously, they were a major part of our inspiration to start this Blog. So again, I/We would like to thank you guys for all the great enlightenment and laughs over the years. Thanks FJM.

-cheers

Sad to say...

Apologies to the 3 people who read this blog for a lack of posts recently, as I know you wait with bated breath to hear what Juan and I have to say. Just been really busy with work blah blah blah noone really cares.

Moving on, no dumb shit here. Just a quick sad note that FJM, the blog that inspired Juan and I to begin this little slice of internet heaven, has decided to call it quits. Actually, that was awful grammar, the guys who write for FJM have decided to call it quits. My heart sank a little when I saw their farewell post, as they are a blog that I literally would have paid to read. If you haven't already, I absolutely recommend going to firejoemorgan.com, and starting waaaayyyy back to the very beginning of the site's archives,(which I believe started in April of '05) and read some of the wittiest, most spot-on bad sports journalism commentary one could ever hope to come across. These guys were professional writers (literally) in every sense of the word, and gave me belly laugh after belly laugh, and completely changed the way I watch baseball today. So as they would say on FJM, I "tip my hat" to Ken Tremendous, Dak, and Junior, and hope for one day to read new stuff from them. Thanks guys.

Favre-Gate

So I was watching the Giants v. Philly last night, which turned out to be a great game. But my favorite part was a commercial from the NFL Network, advertising this Thursday's Jets v. Patriots game. I don't remember it word for word, but will try to get a youtube video of it to add to this post at a later time. Basically, the commercial calls Brett Favre a 'Hero', and since he's a hero, he has to face 'Villains' (the Patriots). Rather than saying its Favre's 6,327 consecutive start, they say something along the lines of 'His 6,327 time leading his army to war'. Its fucking brilliant

-cheers

Derek Jeter: Defensive Butcher

Bill James and nine of his statistically inclined buddies conducted a study in which they watched every ball hit this year by MLB batters. They then examined the defensive result (or lack thereof) that occurred after the ball was hit. They used this study to determine overall defensive effectiveness.

The most interesting result?

Derek Jeter came out as the worst defensive SS in baseball.

Now this isn't the first time Jeter came out on the short end of these defensive studies. Granted, they are FAR from infallible, but over and over this guy ends up at the bottom! There HAS to be something to that, despite the fact that meat-headed Yankee fans will swear he's Ozzie Smith only better looking.

However, this is neither here nor there for the purposes of this blog. I've sworn Derek Jeter was an overrated player for years, a sentiment echoed by MLB players when they named himthe most overrated player in baseball in a fairly recent SI poll.

Cutting to the chase, Boomer and Carton were talking about this study this morning, and it was truly great radio. Carton mentioned the results of the study, and Boomer replied with, "Yeah but that study doesn't measure the intangibles."

You're right Boom. The study doesn't measure the "intangibles" because, get this: THEY DON'T FUCKING EXIST!!!!!!111!!!!111!!! For the love of God, why is this such a difficult idea to accept? You can't just make shit up and pass it off as truth. Prove to me that Derek Jeter provides "intangibles." Please, just show me some factual evidence. You won't be able to do it, so it makes it an unwinnable argument for someone who disagrees with you. It's hokey, cliche'd crap. For YEARS statisticians have been saying Derek Jeter sucks defensively, what's more they have been BACKING IT UP with statistical proof that he does, in fact, suck at defense. And these stubborn idiots flat out refuse to even acknowledge the possibility that these studies just might have a little bit of merit. They'll even go further, and attack the men who conduct such studies, calling them "stat geeks" and "nerds" and "pussies who never played the game."

So then Boomer got on his soapbox about "clubhouse leadership" and garbage like that. Carton responded with "I am convinced that all of you guys who actually played the game make this crap up. Show me a team that's winning and I'll show you 9 leaders on that team."

Truer words have never been spoken.

"Clubhouse leadership," "chemistry", "intangibles" and all of that other shit is just BS that helps people like Bill Plaschke and Jon Heyman collect paychecks. On this blog, we have a simple mantra: Prove it to be true, and we'll believe you.